


The Christmas Star

by Wintermoth



Series: Starlight [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Season/Series 03, Starlight 'Verse, With Starlight in Their Wake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-03
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-16 00:50:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2249715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wintermoth/pseuds/Wintermoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose just said goodbye to her mother for the last time, and now all she wants to do is cry and sleep for maybe a year. But then a stranger appears in the TARDIS and the Doctor and Rose find themselves in for another hectic Christmas. (Part of the Starlight 'verse)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bad Wolf Bay

**Author's Note:**

> Consider this a Christmas Special. Acts as a prequel to With Starlight in Their Wake  
> 

* * *

  
“Are you ready for this?” the Doctor asked.  
  
“No,” Rose replied, gripping the edge of the pilot’s seat. “I want to see her, but… but this is it. I only get this once. After this, I’ll never…”  
  
No, she would not cry. Not now, not yet. She hadn’t cried since that very first day and she wasn’t about to start now. Not when she was about to see her mother for the very last time.  
  
It’d been just over a week since they’d saved the world from two separate races brought into the universe by a bunch of idiots that went by the Torchwood Institute. In the late 1800s, after Rose and the Doctor had saved her royal behind from an alien werewolf, Queen Victoria set up Torchwood, which was basically a bunch of blowhards she gave responsibility to for protecting Britain from hostile aliens. Which would’ve been fine, really–except her Royal Ungratefulness had put the Doctor, the single biggest reason the planet was still even spinning, at the top of the Institute’s Most Wanted list.  
  
Torchwood discovered a rift in time and space and, like any great agency does, had poked and prodded it enough to end up wearing down the walls between their universe and another–coincidentally, the same universe she and the Doctor had saved from the Cybermen. Cybermen, who were trying to come through from their side as well, and with the help of a Void Ship, managed to get through. Bit by bit they came, spending little increments on Earth every day for about two months, until they travelled through the rift entirely. At the same time, the Void ship opened, and four Daleks known as the Cult of Skaro emerged. They were difficult enough when there weren’t armies of both trying to take over the planet at the same time.  
  
But the Doctor came up with a plan to stop them as he always did, with a bit of help from Mickey, Jake, not-Pete Tyler, and a team from the parallel universe. Her mum had gone to the other universe with Pete, and the Doctor had tried to send her, too, but she came back. She wasn’t leaving him. Not now and not ever. She especially wasn’t going to be forced to live in a universe without him in it, stuck on one planet in one time, for the rest of her life.  
  
There had been a close call near the end. The lever on the right side of the room, the one the Doctor was behind, malfunctioned. He’d had to let go of his clamp to pull it back into place, and he’d held on to that thin piece of metal for dear life as the Void tried to pull him in. But he was a Time Lord and he was stronger than a human man, and he’d managed to keep his fingers firmly around the lever. Pete had appeared just for a second, maybe to see if she was alright, but when he saw them both safe(ish) and the Void gaping behind him, he’d teleported back before he was sucked in (or worse: trapped).  
  
But now Jackie was trapped on the other side of the Void.  
  
The Doctor sat down next to Rose on the jumpseat. “I’m sorry, Rose. This is the only thing I can give you. Anything else and both our universes will collapse. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”  
  
“It’s okay. I’m not more important than the universe. Never mind two,” she mumbled. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, nodding. “Start the transmission.”  
  
He put his hands on either side of her face, turning it towards him. They stared into each other’s eyes for a moment. He kissed her forehead, then stood up and moved to the console, pressing a series of buttons. “Now, you won’t be able to see them properly, not like you can see me. Do you remember what astral projection is? The Seers on the Whispering Moon?”  
  
“Their minds traveling outside their bodies?”  
  
“Close enough.” He nodded. “I’m projecting our minds and an image of our bodies into that universe. They will be able to see us, and it’ll seem like we’re there, but we’re just images. They won’t be able to touch us. Which is good for me, because I have the feeling your mum might want to hit me one last time.”  
  
Rose let out a choked laugh and a little smile lifted the corners of her mouth. She then exhaled through her nose, closing her eyes and composing herself, before opening them and looking towards the Doctor.  
  
“Are you ready?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“When you feel it start, think of your mother. Think of nothing but her. It’ll help her find us. I have no idea where we’ll come out on Earth, though I’ve tried to ensure we’ll be within a few weeks of when she arrived, and I’ve sent a few messages on ahead to get her attention–hopefully one of them will have made it through. Though, knowing Jackie Tyler, I wouldn’t be surprised if none–” He saw the panicked look in her eyes and switched back to explaining the process. “Theoretically, you should be able to draw her towards us. I’ll help. Remember–nothing but your mum.”  
  
Rose nodded, slipping her hand into his. “Let’s go.”  
  
The Doctor pressed a button on the console and closed his eyes. She did as well, though it occurred to her she had no idea what her cue to start thinking about Jackie was. A second later she felt something like cool water sliding through her body, up her legs, torso, arms, shoulders, neck, and head; pulling her up and out into everything and nothing. This had to be it.  
  
 _Jacqueline Andrea Suzette Tyler. Jackie. Mum._  
  
 _Dark brown hair dyed blonde, always dyed blonde, as long as I’ve been alive._  
  
 _The smell of the tea she makes in the morning. Her favorite perfume. Her laugh._  
  
 _Mum. Mummy._  
  
 _Mum smiling at me as I ran into school for the first time._  
  
 _Mum! Come on!_  
  
 _Mum holding me when I cried. Shouting at me in anger. Crying. Telling me about Dad._  
  
 _Christmas, Easter, birthdays. Mummy._  
  
 _Running towards Pete in the hallway at Torchwood._  
  
 _Mum!_  
  
“Rose?”  
  
Rose opened her eyes and gasped. They were on a desolate beach, underneath a gray sky, waves crashing against the shore. But the world didn’t seem concrete. Just behind it, she could almost see the blurry features of the TARDIS. Jackie, Pete, and Mickey stood a few feet from them, bundled up, the wind blowing their clothes and hair. She looked down at herself, then up at the Doctor. She couldn’t feel the cold and their clothes and hair were undisturbed by the wind. They really were just projections.  
  
“Rose? Doctor?”  
  
“Hello, Jackie,” the Doctor said.  
  
Rose swallowed, smiling at her mother. “Hi, Mum.”  
  
Jackie walked slowly towards them, her expression sad. “Are you…?” She trembled. “Are you ghosts?”  
  
“What? No, we’re fine.”  
  
“Look at yourselves, though, you’re all… see-through.”  
  
“Really?” Rose looked down at herself then back up at her mum. “No, it’s not me, it’s you.”  
  
“Oh, hang on.” The Doctor let go of her hand and pulled out the sonic screwdriver. He adjusted the setting and pointed it at where the console was next to their bodies. The world around them solidified, the interior of the TARDIS fading almost completely. “Better?”  
  
“Yeah,” Mickey nodded. “Hi, Rose.”  
  
“Mickey. Pete.” She smiled at her sort-of dad.  
  
“Where are you?” Jackie asked. “You’re not here, really, are you?”  
  
The Doctor shook his head. “We’re just projections. We’re actually standing inside the TARDIS. There’s one tiny little gap in the universe left, just about to close. And it takes a lot of power just to do this. We’re in orbit around a super nova. We’re burning up a sun, you know, and I wouldn’t do this for anyone but her.”  
  
“You’re burning up the _sun_?” Pete blurted.  
  
“Not the one the Earth relies on,” the Doctor assured him.  
  
“But what about the people who live around that sun?”  
  
He shook his head. “No, don’t worry. I made sure there were no planets in the vicinity depending on this star. I’ve been trying for weeks, but this is all I could do. She wanted to say goodbye.”  
  
Jackie walked forward suddenly, her arms open to embrace her daughter, and Rose’s face crumpled, knowing it wouldn’t be possible. “No, Mum. You can’t touch me.”  
  
“Like hell I can’t!”  
  
“No, I mean you literally can’t! I’m not there enough.”  
  
Jackie’s arms fell to her sides. “Well then, come on a bit more.”  
  
“I can’t.”  
  
“If we did, the whole thing would fracture,” the Doctor explained gently. “And two universes would collapse. I’m sorry, Jackie, but I couldn’t do that even for Rose.”  
  
She swallowed, lowering her head and trembling as she realized what he was saying. She put her hands over her face and Pete came forward and slid his arm around her soothingly.  
  
“Why here?” Mickey asked, drawing their attention away from Jackie so she could have a moment to collect herself. “Why’d you make us come all the way out here?”  
  
“I didn’t,” the Doctor told him. “We could’ve come out in Cuba or your backyard. I had no control over where we landed, so this beach must be where the hole is largest. Where are we, anyway?” he asked, peering around with interest.  
  
“We’re in bloody Norway!” Jackie cried indignantly, lifting her head from her hands. “Three days we’ve been drivin’!”  
  
“Hey, don’t look at me like that!” he protested. “I didn’t put the hole here.”  
  
“And here’s the kicker, Rose,” Mickey added. “We’re about fifty miles out of a town named Bergen. This place is called Dårlig Ulv Stranden.” He paused, and at the blank look upon Rose’s face, he leaned in closer, eyes wide, stage whispering, “Bad Wolf Bay.”  
  
Rose barked out a laughed at the irony, but then sobered almost immediately. “That means I…I must’ve known… D’you think _I_ made sure the hole stayed here long enough?” She looked up at the Doctor, but he shook his head, unable to answer her.  
  
“We’ve only got about three minutes left, I’m afraid,” he told them. “After that, the hole will close up on its own, all through time and space, and I can’t re-open it without risking realities shattering and the Void sucking us all in.”  
  
Mickey and Pete nodded, but Jackie looked distraught.  
  
“Are you gonna be alright here, Mum?” Rose asked.  
  
“I… Yeah, I think I am.” She looked up at Pete and smiled. He smiled back at her, and for a moment they were both young again, as in love as newlyweds.  
  
“G’on, Jackie, tell her.” Pete motioned between her and Rose with a grin.  
  
Jackie smiled at her daughter. “Guess what, sweetheart? I’m…I’m pregnant. Two months gone.”  
  
Rose’s mouth fell open. “What? How?”  
  
Jackie her hands on her hips, looking so much like her usual self that it hurt. “I’m pretty sure I’ve explained how this works before.”  
  
“Yeah, I know, I know, but… I mean, how long have you been here?”  
  
“Four months,” she croaked sadly, and Rose thought she heard the Doctor chuckle once. “I thought I’d never see you again.”  
  
“After this, you can’t,” the Doctor reminded her.  
  
Jackie Tyler turned her furious gaze on him and walked forward. “You! Ever since you showed up with your box our lives have been completely mad! My daughter disappearin’ off the face of the Earth for months, aliens and metal monsters invadin’, evil Santas, a–a bloody Christmas tree trying to kill me! You take her away and every time you bring ‘er back, her eyes are older or she’s hurt somewhere, somehow. Now you’re tellin’ me I can never see her again? This is your fault! It’s your fault!” She tried to jabbed her finger at his chest, but her hand went straight through.  
  
The Doctor made a face and Jackie stepped back, swallowing. Tears filled her eyes, threatening to spill over. “But… Every time I look at you two, I see it. She’s never been as happy as she is with you and I can’t hate you for that.” She turned to Rose. “Don’t you worry about me, sweetheart; I’ve got Pete and Mickey here.”  
  
Rose was crying now, tears starting to leak out of her eyes onto her face. “Mum–”  
  
Jackie glared at the Time Lord that had stolen her daughter’s heart with a wrath that only a mother could summon. “But she’s only got you now, Doctor. So you better take care of her. I mean it!”  
  
“I will,” he promised.  
  
“That means no gallivanting through mirrors into 18th century France.” Mickey folded his arms, frowning like a protective older brother. “Or sending her back to the Estate when things look rough.”  
  
“I know. I won’t.”  
  
“If you do, I’m comin’ after you,” Jackie warned. “And you’ll be feeling that slap well after you change your face again.”  
  
“I’ll help her,” Pete added, and Mickey nodded in agreement.  
  
“Jackie, Mickey, Pete… I swear to you, I will do my best to protect her and I will not abandon her.” The Doctor swore solemnly. He lowered his head. “Time’s almost up.”  
  
Rose nodded, sniffling and reaching up to wipe her eyes. “Mum, will you tell my little brother or sister… Well…tell them about me, yeah?”  
  
Tears were rolling down Jackie’s face as she nodded. “I will, sweetheart,” she promised quietly, her voice breaking. “Goodbye, then, Doctor. I love you both.”  
  
“Mickey.” She looked at him and seemed to struggle for a moment. “Thank you. For everything.”  
  
“Love you, babe,” he said with a sad smile. “See ya, boss.”  
  
“Pete… Pete, she’s got no one but you, either. So what she told to the Doctor that…that applies to you as well.” She swallowed and sniffled again. Pete Tyler nodded seriously. “And thank you for–”  
  
They were fading away, the world around them dissolving back into the interior of the TARDIS.  
  
“I love you, Mum!” she shouted as she felt the watery sensation rushing across her body again, pulling her away from her mother, Mickey, and Pete. In the time it took for her to blink, the world had faded away completely and they were back inside their bodies, standing in the TARDIS.  
  
Rose’s entire body shuddered. She’d been holding the grief in so they wouldn’t have to see and know how much it was hurting her. Now they were gone, they wouldn’t see–they would never see again. She put her hands over her face and let the tears flow freely. Her face screwed up as she sobbed, covering her face with her hands, and she doubled-over under the sheer pain of it all. She heard the Doctor pressing a few buttons quickly–probably cutting the power-link to the star–and then he touched her back. She straightened, turning her body so she was facing him and buried her face in his chest.  
  
His put his arms around her, crushing her tightly to his chest as she shook with the force of her sobs. He’d seen Rose sad before–after her Dad died, after the Dalek, after she saw her planet die, after France, after Mickey left, and countless other times–but never had she cried like this. He knew the pain she felt. He knew what it felt like to lose your family, your friends, and everything you always thought you’d have to fall back on.  
  
So he did all he could do to help. Murmured softly to her, promises that he was there, that he wouldn’t leave her, things in the language of his home world, the only one that the TARDIS never translated. He rubbed his hand up and down her back, his other holding her close, and failed to hold back the few tears that had built up. He _would_ miss Jackie Tyler, oddly enough. He hated domestic, but he’d… he had honestly loved the little flat Rose had grown up in. The flat–oh, they’d have to go back and deal with the flat, save some of their stuff before the authorities got ahold of it. But _how_ was he supposed to tell her that? Maybe she’d realize on her own and he wouldn’t have to–  
  
A quiet yelp from across the room brought them both up short. The Doctor’s head snapped up, and Rose turned within his arms so her back was to his chest, both of them looking for the source of the sound. They were in deep space, in a completely different galaxy from Earth, somewhere in the 180th century, so neither of them expected to see a red-haired human, maybe in her thirties, wearing a 21st century style wedding dress and veil. She stared at them, her mouth open in shock.  
  
Rose blinked her eyes a few times, reaching up to wipe away the tears, just to make sure she wasn’t seeing things.  
  
“What?” the Doctor murmured, aghast.  
  
“Who are you?” the bride demanded, looking them up and down.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Where am I?  
  
“What?!”  
  
“What the hell is this place?”  
  
“WHAT?”  
  
“Is she crying? What the _hell_ have you done to that poor girl? Has he hurt you, sweetheart? Did he…did he _kidnap_ you, too? Don’t worry, ‘cos I’ll have ‘im, I will!”


	2. The  Unexpected Guest

  
Rose figured she should probably say something to the random bride that had just magically appeared inside their impenetrable time and space and accused the Doctor of kidnapping. Like that she wasn’t being held captive, and she should probably say it before the woman came over and throttled him. But Rose couldn’t quite get her voice to work and her mouth had gone slack in shock so all she managed was: “Huh?”  
  
“Is that a yes?” the bride demanded.   
  
Rose opened and closed her mouth, trying and failing to get her voice to work. Behind her, the Doctor was stammering and she could feel his body angled towards the console. “I…I didn’t…we aren’t…” He dropped one arm from Rose’s shoulder and gestured to the rotor. “We’re in flight! That is–that is physically impossible! How did–”  
  
“Tell me where I am,” the bride commanded. “I demand you tell me right now–where am I?”  
  
“Inside the TARDIS,” he answered mechanically.   
  
“The what?”  
  
“The TARDIS.”  
  
“The WHAT?”  
  
Rose finally got her voice to work. “Ship’s called called the TARDIS.”  
  
The Doctor let go of Rose and moved over to the controls, trying to figure out how the hell the woman had gotten onboard. Rose was still frozen in place but when the redhead’s eyes zeroed in on her, she had the urge to bolt. She was in no state for any sort of fight at the moment.  
  
“Has he been holdin’ you prisoner in here?”  
  
“N-no, I…I live here,” Rose answered faintly. The woman’s entire demeanor changed from concerned to heated in a matter of seconds.  
  
“Oh, so you’re in on this, too, eh?” She guessed and took a step forward. That single movement alone was more menacing than a Dalek rolling steadily towards her. Or maybe it just had something to do with her current emotional state. “What the hell is going on?”  
  
“Alright, my turn for questions. How did you get in here?” the Doctor demanded.   
  
“Well, obviously, when you kidnapped me!” the woman snarled while he looked her up and down in confusion. “Who was it? Who’s paying you? Is it Nerys? Oh my God, she’s finally got me back. This has got Nerys written all over it!”  
  
“Who the hell is Nerys?” he asked, rubbing his neck.  
  
“Your best friend.”  
  
“Uh, no, my best friend is standing right here.” He inclined his head towards Rose who was still frozen in place. “And her name is not Nerys. Hold on, wait a minute. What are you dressed like that for?”  
  
Rose rolled her eyes and sighed exasperatedly.  
  
“I’m going 10-pin bowling,” the bride answered calmly, then started shouting again. “What do you _think_ , Dumbo? I was halfway up the isle!”  
  
The Doctor backed away from her and threw a look at Rose. She was shaking her head at him. Well, how was he to know the woman was actually getting married? Just because someone wore jimjams didn’t mean they were going to sleep. She could’ve been going to a–a costume party, or something.   
  
He moved to the controls, flipping switching, adjusting knobs. There had to be some sort of energy field, something he could trace. People didn’t just _appear_ inside the TARDIS! Well, sometimes they did, but he was always parked somewhere, or had been parked somewhere recently, and they snuck onboard then. But it didn’t happen when they were floating in the middle of space near a supernova, a million light years from any human civilization.   
  
He highly doubted there was another ship outside the doors. The scanners weren’t showing anything around them. Plus, while he and Rose had been distracted for a few minutes, they certainly would’ve heard the door open over the transmission, and the extra passenger hadn’t been there when the transmission cut out.  
  
All the while, the bride continued on her very _loud_ tirade. “I've been waiting all my life for this. I was just seconds away! And then you–I dunno, you drugged me or something!”  
  
“I haven’t done anything!” he told her.   
  
She didn’t believe him. “We’re having the police on you! Me and my husband–as soon as he is my husband–we’re gonna–”  
  
“SHUT UP!” Rose shouted suddenly, startling everyone, herself included. The Doctor’s hands froze on the controls and he looked up. The bride rounded on her, saying nothing, and for a moment the only noise in the room was the grating of the rotor, the console beeping, and the hum of the TARDIS herself.  
  
“Really…just…shut up.” she whispered, lowering her hands from her ears.  
  
“Look here, Blondie–” the woman began.  
  
“No, _you_ look here, Ginger!” Rose took a step towards the woman and jabbed her finger at her. “You think _you’re_ having a bad day? Well I can guarantee mine’s a thousand times worse, and all your shoutin’ is givin’ me a headache! Look, I’m sorry you got yanked out of your wedding, but we didn’t do it and I think he’s trying to figure how you got here and get you back. So, please, do us all a favor, and just be quiet!”  
  
She exhaled loudly and sucked in a breath of air through her teeth. The Doctor lifted his eyebrows, unable to keep his surprise from showing. He went back to messing with the controls, but he was smiling.  
  
The bride stared. Rose cocked her head to the side challengingly.   
  
“Fine then,” she growled. “Just tell me how to get out of here.”  
  
“Same way you got in, I’d think.”   
  
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” The bride stalked around the console with her hands in the air. “I don’t _know_ how I got in here!”  
  
Rose blinked, looking over the woman’s shoulder. “You mean you didn’t come through the front door?”  
  
At the mention of a door, the woman spun around. She promptly located the exit and, hitching her skirt up, rushed down the ramp towards the doors. The Doctor looked up in alarm and lifted his arm to stop her. “No, wait a minute! Wait a minute! Don’t!”  
  
She threw open the doors and found herself staring at what was left of the supernova, glowing brightly in the black. The Doctor lowered his arm and sighed. With a glance at Rose, he slowly walked down the ramp to explain things to their guest.   
  
Rose took a few steps in the right direction and sank down into the pilot’s seat. Her bones felt like they were made of lead. Angry bride or no angry bride, she really needed to go lay down somewhere and cry and then sleep for a year. The sooner they sorted her the sooner they could just get on with the other things that needed taking care of. She had to clear out her mum’s flat, check on her friends and family to see who’d survived the attack, and inform them of her mother’s death…and Mickey’s, too, now. So much needed doing and she didn’t want to have to do any of it.  
  
She heard the Doctor say her name and she glanced up. “What?”  
  
“Just introductions,” he explained. “And who are you?”  
  
“Donna.”  
  
Rose tried to smile, failed, and simply lifted her hand briefly.   
  
The Doctor looked Donna up and down appraisingly. “Human?”  
  
“Yeah. …Is that optional?”  
  
“Well, it is around here.”   
  
Donna looked up at him, though she didn’t seem to have much room left for any sort of surprises and looked away just as quickly. Rose felt a little bad for yelling at her now. She’d been at her wedding, halfway to the altar, and the next thing she knows, she’s inside someplace she’s never seen before. She was probably terrified and more than a little freaked out. If that’d happened to Rose, she would’ve done exactly the same thing, just with a few slaps involved.   
  
“You’re an alien.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
They stared out into the supernova for a few more seconds then their guest shook her head and complained about the coldness of space. The Doctor pulled the doors shut sharply and loped back up to the console. “But I don’t understand it and I understand everything!”  
  
“Pears are good,” Rose muttered.  
  
Without turning from Donna, he pointed at her. “Except that. But this–this _can’t_ happen! There is no way a human being can lock itself on to the TARDIS. It must be…”   
  
He turned to the console and plunged his hand into the tool bag dangling from the side. He puled out an ophthalmoscope and used it to look into her eyes, muttering to himself at a hundred miles per hour.   
  
Rose sighed, pushing herself up from the chair, and walked around the console, arms folded. Donna glanced at her for answers and she made a face, half grimace half apologetic. Rolling her eyes and sucking in air through her nose, Donna reached up and smacked his cheek. It didn’t even look like she’d hit him hard, but the Doctor recoiled like he’d just gotten a whack from Jackie Tyler herself.   
  
“What was that for?!” he asked indignantly.  
  
“GET ME TO THE CHURCH!”  
  
“Right. Fine.” He dropped the ophthalmoscope back into the tool bag and loped around to the coordinates panel. “We don’t want you here anyway! Where is this wedding?”  
  
“Saint Mary’s, Hayden Road, Chiswick, London, England, Earth, the Solar System! Is that specific enough for you?”  
  
“No, actually, it’s not,” he snapped right back at her. “Maybe you could give me a year? Or should I just drop you in a random year in the 19th century and let you walk?”  
  
“Doctor, Donna, really, both of you. Stop it.” Rose pleaded before the redhead could go off again. “Yellin’ at him isn’t going to help, and droppin’ her off during Vicky’s era ain’t gonna help, either. Please…just stop.”  
  
“Are you alright?” the Doctor asked quietly.  
  
“Really? You’re askin’ me that? Doctor, how do you _think_ I am?”  
  
“You’re right. I’m sorry.” He walked around to the jump seat, placing his hands on either side of her face. His eyes scrutinized her face, taking in everything. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, she hadn’t for several days now, and he realized for the first time how dark the circles under her eyes were. “Rose, when was the last time you got a good night’s sleep?”  
  
“The night before Canary Wharf.” she admitted, curling her hands loosely around his forearms.  
  
“But you _have_ slept since then?” he checked.  
  
“Caught a ‘lil kip here and there, but not since you told me you’d found a stable crack y’could keep open.”   
  
The Doctor’s eyes widened and he calculated how long it’d been since then. “But, Rose, that was thirty hours ago.” How was she even still talking coherently?  
  
Rose shrugged. “I couldn’t fall asleep,” she said simply.  
  
He sighed and pressed his lips to her forehead, lingering for a few seconds, then murmured to her. “Go lay down. I’ll take care of this, alright? Then we’ll go somewhere warm. Not hot, just warm. How about Sarifia? They have cities made of clouds floating over a planet-wide ocean.”  
  
They both knew he was just trying to make her feel better. She didn’t feel like going anywhere right now, and she couldn’t even if she did. Not until she sorted out the flat and figured out who was still alive. In the long run it might’ve been easier if everyone just assumed she and her mother had died, but she couldn’t do that to her family and friends. Besides, on the off chance she ever had to come back to Earth for an extended stay, she wanted to have some options available to her. Doorsteps she could turn up on without causing panic and lots of legal complications.   
  
“Yeah, sure,” she lied.   
  
“What happened to you?” Donna asked. When she wasn’t snarling and ranting, her voice was smooth and gentle and right then, so motherly that it hurt.   
  
There was a lump in her throat making it difficult to speak. “My mum’s gone,” she managed.  
  
The Doctor kissed her forehead again and released her with a gentle push towards the door. He watched her go and then he turned around. “Now, Miss Donna, I managed to get a trace on you–I can take you right back to where you came from. Chiswick it is!”  
  
Rose smiled to herself and ran her hands along the walls. “Hang on to somethin’!” she called because she knew he might conveniently forget that detail.   
  
The TARDIS jolted and the floor disappeared out from under her feet. Rose yelped in surprise as she was chucked into the air. She reached out and caught herself on one of the bits of coral sticking from the wall. From the console room, she heard Donna yelling abuse at the Doctor and his ship. Damn, the woman had a mouth on her. Good job she’d never met the Doctor in his last body, they would’ve probably killed each other.   
  
Rose heard the Doctor protest, “She told you to hang on!”   
  
“YEAH, BUT YOU DIDN’T BLOODY WELL GIVE ME A CHANCE, DID YOU?”  
  
Rose groaned, very glad the Doctor had elected to handle this one himself. She just hoped he survived the ordeal. He may have very well met his match in the ginger woman.   
  
She waited until she felt the TARDIS land before letting go of the coral and continuing down the hallways. The TARDIS had moved their bedrooms closer to the control room as of late, usually only one or two hallways away. It was one hallway this time, the ship no doubt sensing her exhaustion. She opened her door, the only one in the whole ship with a golden curved handle, and shut it behind her.   
  
She gave the command in her mind and the lights came up halfway. She kicked off her shoes and curled her toes into the carpet, which was the exact shade of the TARDIS exterior (the Doctor’s idea of a joke and she couldn’t convince the ship to set it right). She unclasped her bra and dropped it unceremoniously onto the floor, pulled her shirt back on, then curled up under the lavender duvet. The TARDIS dimmed the lights while her hum increased in volume ever so slightly, smooth and gentle.  
  
She was trying to soothe her, Rose realized. The ship had been trying to do that all week, but even more so now. She felt the TARDIS comforting her in her mind, sending her feelings of love and safety, and a sense of calm slid through her body. It was like having her mother hum her to sleep when she was a kid. Muscles relaxing one by one, her heart rate slowing, she felt the exhaustion pulling her under.   
  
The ship continued her lullaby.  
  
~*~  
  
The computer droned out the words they wanted to hear. He was absolutely bursting with livid glee. It would work. The armies would be sucked in and the world would be safe. Her family was safe on the other side. The two of them would be on this side, but they’d be together. They’d all have someone to make them happy. They wouldn’t all be together like they wanted, but happiness comes with a price, and if this was the price for hers, she’d take it.   
  
_Or so I’d thought._  
  
“That’s more like it!” Rose cheered. “Bit of a smile! The old team…!”  
  
The Doctor crossed the room, holding the two magnaclamps, grinning like mad. “Hope and Glory, Mutt and Jeff, Shiver and Shake!”  
  
“Which one’s Shiver?”  
  
“Oh, I’m Shake.” He dropped the magnaclamp into her arms and walked to the far side of the room. Rose attached it to the wall near the door.   
  
“Press the red button. When it starts, just hold on tight.” He ordered as they moved to their respective levers. “Shouldn’t be too bad for us but the Daleks and the Cybermen are steeped in Void Stuff. Are you ready?”  
  
Rose noticed a flicker out of the corner of her eye and she looked towards the windows and saw the three familiar metal monsters hovering outside the window. She couldn’t hear them, but their lights flashed, signifying speech. “So are they.”  
  
“Let’s do it!” The Doctor shouted and as one, they pushed the levers into place where they settled with sharp clicks. Racing around the levers, they hooked their arms around the magnaclamps and held on tight.  
  
“Online,” the computer intoned. The blank wall began to glow brightly with the power of the Void until it became almost painful to look at.   
  
She felt something begin to pull on her and she tightened her arms around the clamp handle. The strength of the pull increased and Rose knew if she wasn’t holding onto the alien tech, she’d be sucked into the Void like the armies of Cybermen and Daleks flying past her.   
  
_They were screaming._  
  
“The breach is open!” the Doctor shouted. “Into the Void! HA!”  
  
Rose laughed breathlessly. Her hair whipped around, smacking her in the face and getting stuck in her mouth, but she dared not free her hand to fix it. The Void was powerful and uncaring. Like the black hole whose grip she’d been trapped in not too long ago.   
  
“Rose!”  
  
“Mum?!” Rose shouted, looking around. No, _no_! She couldn’t be here! She was in that parallel world with Pete. She was _safe_. “Mum, where are you? Mum, you have to go back!!”  
  
“Rose! Rose! Rose!” Something about her mum’s voice was making her uneasy. There was something wrong, something changing, as it got louder. “Rose! Rose!” It was deepening, losing the tones of life and taking on a dead, robotic drone. A single set of footsteps approached, marching mechanically, and the voice of a Cyberman was calling her name without any emotion.   
  
All the other Cybermen had been sucked in along with the Daleks, but the Void remained open, sucking and pulling, but now a Cyberman stood just feet from her, watching her through black empty holes, completely unaffected.  
  
“You are Rose Tyler. Confirm: you are Rose Tyler.”  
  
“Confirm: You are Peter Tyler.”  
  
“I…”  
  
“I recognize you. I went first. My name was Jacqueline Tyler.”  
  
“No!” Rose shouted. “No, you’re not! Doctor!” she shouted, looking across the room, but he wasn’t there. Her head whipped around, searching, but he wasn’t anywhere. Gone? Fallen into the Void? “Doctor?!”  
  
The Cyberman claiming to be her mother lifted its arm, aiming at her, and fired. The blast hit her square in the chest, but it didn’t kill her. It knocked her away from the magnaclamp and the Void seized her in its cold grip, pulling her towards the light.   
  
It filled her vision, so painfully bright.   
  
“Doctor!” she screamed as she fell–  
  
Rose bolted upright, still screaming. Her eyes darted around wildly for a moment, registered the walls around her as those in her room on the TARDIS, then she squeezed her eyes shut. It had felt so real. So _real_. Curling into a ball, she hugged her knees to her chest, and screamed a wordless cry of terror and desperation. They always felt real.  
  
The TARDIS jolted around her and as she was tossed onto the floor, it occurred to Rose that the ship had been in motion the whole time. The lights in her room were also on at full power. Rose lifted her head, propping herself up on her arm, and looked around. She had no idea how long she’d been out, though it certainly didn’t feel like long at all. Just long enough for her subconscious to give her hell.  
  
“What is it?” she croaked. The lights blinked on and off and she felt a sense of urgency in her mind. Which meant there was probably trouble. Should’ve guessed. People didn’t just appear on the TARDIS. And that had been one hell of a jolt if it reached her all the way in here. Usually the worst of the effects of the ship’s less-than-steady flight were confided to the console room and nearby areas. She took extra care to avoid upheaving the rooms with breakable things in them, people included.   
  
Rose reached out and grabbed her bra, pushing herself off the floor. She slipped her arms out of her shirt to put it back on then tried to figure out where her shoes ened up when everything went flying. The TARDIS blinked the lights insistently again as she was pulling on her trainers. “Alright, alright, I’m going!”  
  
Rose hurried through the corridors towards the console room. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting. Maybe just the Doctor working the controls frantically, or maybe the Doctor and Donna glaring death at each other, or maybe one of them dead on the floor while the other stood over their body in triumph. As ridiculous as that sounded, she was more prepared for that than she was for the sight that greeted her. Because it might’ve just been the oddest thing she’d ever seen.   
  
The Doctor was standing in the open doorway on one leg, trying to keep the doors open with his arms and other leg, with a string in one hand connecting to several of the controls on the console. Outside the doors the land was whizzing by at an alarming speed and they seemed to be cruising right alongside a car. They must be flying along the motorway–and, hang on, that was Donna looking out the window. The Doctor was shouting at her, telling her to jump.   
  
The car moved out of view and the Doctor watched it go then looked over his shoulder and pulled on the string. The console sparked and there was a rather loud bang as something exploded from the rear. The TARDIS hummed loudly, affronted, with an added undertone of exasperation in Rose’s mind. She noticed the mallet in a different spot on the console and sighed, rolling her eyes. Hitting her with a mallet, using string to manipulate her controls, it was no wonder the TARDIS had been so insistent that Rose hurry up.   
  
“Doctor! The hell are you doing?” Rose shouted.  
  
He looked over his shoulder. “I thought you were asleep!”  
  
“Hard to sleep when you’re gettin’ knocked about! And when the ship wants you to come save her from abuse!”  
  
The ship collided with something outside and Rose was nearly thrown off her feet. She grabbed the railing and tried to regain her footing.  
  
“Mind the controls!” the Doctor hollered. “Remember how I showed you? Just get us up ahead a bit more and lower us, then keep us going straight and steady.”  
  
Rose let go of the railing and stumbled across the room. She removed the offending string from the controls and gripped the driving levers. “What’s going on?” she called. _Left lever down to go lower, right lever up to move faster._  
  
“Robot Santas strike again!”  
  
Rose raised her eyebrows. “You’re kiddin’ me. Is it Christmas or something?”  
  
“Yep!”  
  
She rolled her eyes. “Figures,” she grumbled to herself. Another mad Christmas, it seemed. At least there wouldn’t be a bloody great ship in the sky this year. She glanced up and saw Donna looking out from the car. She eased back on the levers just enough to keep them level.  
  
The Doctor was shouting again, “Listen to me! You’ve got to jump!”  
  
“I’m not jumping on a motorway!” Donna answered from the car.  
  
“Whatever that thing is, it needs you! And whatever it needs you for, it can’t be good! Now, come on!”  
  
“I’M IN MY WEDDING DRESS!”  
  
“Yes, you look lovely. COME ON!”  
  
Rose glanced down at the levers to make sure they were steady and gripped them as tightly as she could, locking her arms into place. Donna was rude, crass, loud, and more annoying than the Doctor when he was pouting, but Rose had already lost her mother today. The least she could do was make sure another mother didn’t lose her daughter, too.   
  
“Rose!”   
  
Rose looked up.   
  
“Do you trust him?” Donna screamed, gripping the edge of the car. “If he says jump, do you trust him?”  
  
“Yes!” she shouted back without hesitating. “Every time!”  
  
Donna squeezed her eyes shut, gritted her teeth, then opened them and threw herself out of the car. She sailed through the air and hit the Doctor right in the chest. His arms closed around her reflexively and they fell back against the grating. The TARDIS took over then, snapping her doors shut and the controls moved on their own. Rose let go and raced over to the writing, cursing heap of bride and alien on the ramp.  
  
“Come on, Donna, up you get.” Rose offered her hand to the woman.  
  
The bride accepted it with a grateful smile and Rose pulled her up. Donna rearranged her skirt, smoothing it down, then reached out and pulled Rose into a tight hug. “Thank you,” she whispered in her ear.   
  
The Doctor got up on his own, tugging on the bottom of his jacket, and smoothed it out. “What, don’t I get a thank you?”  
  
Donna leaned away from Rose and arched her eyebrows at him. “Don’t think so, Martian. You still owe me for that little comment earlier.”  
  
“I just saved your life. I think that makes us even.”  
  
The console sparked again and _poofed_ out another bit of smoke. The Doctor made a sound of worry and went to get the fire extinguisher off the wall. The TARDIS’s hum was now sharp with what could only be pain and Rose felt bad for not making it to the console room sooner. The ship bumped just a bit as they touched down and the doors flew open.  
  
“Right, out!” the Doctor barked, firing the extinguisher at the tiny fire under the grating.  
  
Rose felt the blast of cold air and snagged her jacket from off the coral strut before stepping through the doors after Donna. The Doctor backed out, coughing and trying to put out as much of the flames as he could. The bride to be was walking towards the edge of the roof. She stopped just back of the edge and stared. Rose did, too, looking at the scape of London before her.  
  
“Oh, I know where we are,” Rose realized. “Figures she’d park around here. Hey, Donna, what year is it right now?”  
  
“Don’t you know?” she asked without turning.  
  
“No, not really. Time’s a bit…funny in there.”  
  
“2008.”  
  
And if it was Christmas today, that meant they were only six months after Canary Wharf. Which meant Rose wouldn’t be setting foot near the Powell Estate. Not that she wanted to. As soon as they were done with Donna they were going back to summer to sort out the flat. So if she went there now and knocked on the door, some stranger would answer. She would see someone else occupying the space that had been theirs, and only theirs, for the last twenty-four years, some other little girl in her room, some other woman making tea in the kitchen…a man sitting on the couch watching telly. A man who wasn’t Mickey or the Doctor, or some boyfriend of her mother’s, or a member of the family. She couldn’t bear to even really think about it, never mind actually see it.  
  
The Doctor joined them by the edge and sighed. “Good thing you showed up when you did,” he told her. “Or it’d be a lot worse.”  
  
“How is she?”  
  
“She’ll be fine, but we’d better give her a couple hours. And how about you, Donna? You alright?”  
  
Donna shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”  
  
“Is the wedding over?” Rose asked.  
  
She nodded once. “Yeah.”   
  
“Well, you can…book another date,” the Doctor suggested.  
  
“Of course we can.”  
  
“Still got the honeymoon.”  
  
“It’s just a holiday now.”  
  
“Yeah. …Yeah, sorry.”  
  
“It’s not your fault,” Donna told him. Rose sighed in relief. It seemed that at least for now the shouting was over.   
  
The Doctor chuckled. “That’s a change.”  
  
Rose sighed and sat down near the edge with her legs crossed. “Shame the TARDIS is hurt or we could just go back and drop you off at the wedding. They’d never know you were even gone for long.”  
  
Donna gawked at her, then at the TARDIS, and then up at the Doctor. “Do you mean to tell me…that not only is that police box a space ship from Mars that’s bigger on the inside, but it can also travel in time?”  
  
The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, it’s not from Mars.”  
  
She sighed and sat down on the edge next to Rose. “So where are you two from then?”  
  
“Me, I’m from over there.” Rose pointed in the direction of the Powell Estate.  
  
“Dodgy place,” Donna remarked.  
  
“Yeah, well.” Rose fiddled with her hands in her lap, not having anything to say in response. She wanted to defend the Estate where she’d grown up, but it was dodgy, especially if you were an outsider. Besides, it wasn’t home anymore. Never would be again. Everything that had made it home was gone now.  
  
“You’re human, then?”  
  
Rose nodded.  
  
“How’d you end up with him?”  
  
“He saved my life, I saved his. He invited me along and I decided to stay.”  
  
Donna’s eyes narrowed and she looked Rose up and down considering. Then she shivered, rubbing her arms. The Doctor put his jacket around her bare shoulders and sat down between her and Rose. “God, you’re skinny. This wouldn’t fit a rat.”   
  
He ignored her and murmured to Rose, “Did you manage to get any sleep at all?”  
  
“Yeah…just enough to dream.” Rose looked down at her hands again, biting her lip. She tapped her fists against her leg and sighed. “Nightmare, again. Been havin’ them since…well, you know.”  
  
“Oh, Rose, why didn’t you tell me?” he asked desolately.   
  
“What good would it’ve done? You were busy.”  
  
“Trying to help you. But if I’d known pausing for a few hours would help you more, I would’ve done it.”  
  
“You can’t fight nightmares. Not the ones in my head, anyway.” She shook her head. “Anyway, right now, we got Donna to worry about. Why were the Santas after her?”  
  
“Oh, that reminds me.” The Doctor reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring. “You need to put this on, Donna.”  
  
The ginger woman had been studiously ignoring them up to that point, but at the mention of her name she looked at him, then down at what he was holding. “Oh, do you have to rub it in? Besides, shouldn’t that be for your wife?”  
  
“Um, we’re not married.”  
  
“Definitely not married,” Rose agreed. Though she ran through the list of times they had been married in her head. Most recent was two weeks ago, and that time because it was a requirement to get into anywhere that wasn’t meant for kids on this one planet. “Just mates.”  
  
Donna looked between them skeptically. “Oh, don’t give me that.”  
  
The Doctor rolled his eyes and explained, “This isn’t a ring, it’s a bio-dampener. Those creatures can trace you, but this should keep you hidden.”  
  
She sighed and allowed him to slide it on her finger. “With this ring, I thee bio-damp,” he said, popping the ‘p’.  
  
Rose snorted.  
  
“For better or for worse,” Donna finished and sighed, lowering her hand to her lap. “So, come on then. Robot Santas–what are they for?”  
  
“Blowing things up…sic-ing Christmas trees onto people,” Rose muttered. “Trying to kidnap Time Lords when they’re asleep.”  
  
The Doctor laughed once, air rushing out through his nose. “They’re just robo-scavengers. The Father Christmas stuff is a disguise. They’re trying to blend in. We met them last Christmas.”  
  
The inflection on the last sentence did not escape Donna’s notice. “Why, what happened then?”  
  
The two time travellers stared at her. “…Great big spaceship?” the Doctor tried. “Hovering over London?”  
  
Donna stared.  
  
“You didn’t notice?”  
  
“I had a bit of a hangover,” she explained.   
  
Rose lifted her eyebrows and mouthed ‘wow.’ “Must’ve been some pretty good stuff.”  
  
“Was alright, yeah.”  
  
“Maybe you shouldn’t drink so much next time,” Rose suggested. “Then again…there’s a few things about last Christmas I wouldn’t mind forgettin’. Share?”  
  
“Don’t you dare,” the Doctor warned. “Last time she got drunk, Jack had to carry her back to the TARDIS, I had to fend off her would-be fiancé, and the next morning she was worse than a Lorcian with a toothache.”  
  
“Shut up,” she grumbled.  
  
“She lived in the bathroom all day. I had to keep bringing her tea and Jack was roarin’ the whole time. Best bit was, she didn’t remember much of anything. Not even that she’d agreed to marry some guy back in the bar.”  
  
Rose scowled and Donna laughed. “Forget what I had–that must’ve been some pretty good stuff!”  
  
“It was and he’s the one that told me to drink it!” she pointed accusingly at him.   
  
“I said try it,” he corrected. “I didn’t say have a pint of it.”  
  
“You should’ve stopped me.”  
  
“No, Jack should’ve stopped you. He knew how potent it was. I was clear across the room.”  
  
“And he was chattin’ up some girl with pink hair and a tail.”  
  
“Of course,” the Doctor muttered and looked out over London again.   
  
“Who’s Jack?” Donna inquired.  
  
“The real question is, what do camouflaged robot mercenaries want with you? …And how did you get inside the TARDIS? I don’t know. ”  
  
Donna sighed.  
  
“What’s your job?” he asked and reached into the coat to pull out his sonic screwdriver.  
  
“I’m a secretary.”  
  
He turned it on and moved it up along her body. “It’s weird. I mean–you're not special, you’re not powerful, you’re not connected, you’re not clever, you're not important…”  
  
Donna had become increasingly agitated and offended throughout the time he was talking. Finally, she’d had enough. “Rose, would you mind if I punched him in the face?”  
  
“Eh, better not.” Rose wrinkled her nose. “He’ll be sulkin’ for hours.”  
  
“Fine, but you can stop bleeping me!” Donna smacked the screwdriver away from her face and looked away angrily.   
  
“What kind of secretary?” he asked after a moment.   
  
“I’m at H.C. Clements. It’s where I met Lance. I was temping. I mean, it was all a bit posh, really. I’d spent the last two years at a Double Glazing firm. Well, I thought, I’m never gonna fit in here. And the he made me a coffee. I mean, that just doesn’t happen. Nobody gets the secretaries a coffee. And Lance–he’s the head of H.R.!” she added. “He don’t need to bother with me! But he was nice, he was funny.”  
  
Rose glanced up to see the woman smiling, a distant look in her eye. She must’ve been thinking about him.  
  
“And it turns out he thought everyone else was really snotty, too. So that’s how it started, me and him–one cup of coffee. That was it.”  
  
“When was this?”  
  
“Six months ago.”  
  
Rose whistled. “Bit fast, innit?”  
  
“Well…he insisted. And he nagged…and he nagged me…and finally he just wore me down and then finally, I just gave in.” She shrugged.  
  
Either she wasn’t telling the whole truth, or Rose pitied whoever ended up being their neighbors. Anyone stubborn enough to wear down the lady sitting next to her had to be one persistent bastard. Oh, the rows they would have… They’d probably be able to hear them all the way on Raxacoricofallapatorius.   
  
“So, what does HC Clements do?”  
  
“Oh, security systems, you know…entry codes, ID cards–that sort of thing. If you ask me, it’s a posh name for ‘locksmiths’.”   
  
“Keys,” he mused.  
  
“Anyway, enough of my C.V. Come on, it’s time to face the consequences.” She shook her head. “Oh, this is gonna be so shaming. …You can do the explaining, Martian Boy.”  
  
“Yeah…I’m not from Mars,” he repeated with a half-smile and stood up. He held his hands out to help them to their feet.   
  
“Oh, I had this great big reception all planned.” Donna sighed. “Everyone’s gonna be heartbroken.”


	3. Santa Claus is Coming

  
Heartbroken was definitely not the word anyone would’ve used to describe the scene that greeted Rose, the Doctor, and Donna in the reception hall. No one was crying or fretting or staring mournfully at the food and decorations. The DJ was playing, the lights were going, the catering staff had brought out the food and the guests had already tucked in. People were dancing to Slade’s _Merry Christmas Everybody_ , eating, talking, and laughing.   
  
A more appropriate word for the scene would’ve been happy…or festive.  
  
Donna stared at the roomful of people, completely stunned; one by one, the entire room realized who’d arrived and froze. The music stopped abruptly and those who hadn’t noticed the newcomers looked around in confusion before spotting the wayward bride and the two people behind her.  
  
“You had the reception without me?” Donna demanded.   
  
Rose made a face and nibbled on the back of her thumb awkwardly.   
  
“Donna, what happened to you?” a smartly dressed black man asked.  
  
“You had the reception _without_ me,” she accused, her voice rising. An awkward silence followed until the Doctor spoke up.  
  
“Hello!” he grinned. “I’m the Doctor. This is Rose.” He tilted his head towards his companion.  
  
“Hi!” she greeted, waving timidly.  
  
Donna turned to them. “They had the reception _without_ me!”  
  
“Yes, I gathered,” he replied.   
  
“Well, it was all paid for,” said a blonde woman in a blue dress. “Why not?”  
  
“Thank you, Nerys,” Donna hissed.  
  
An older woman detached herself from the crowd and approached the trio. “Well, what were we supposed to do? I got your silly little message in the end. ‘I’m on Earth.’ Very funny. But what the hell happened?”  
  
By now the crowd had come forward and all of them demanded to know what had happened, how she’d done it, _why_ she’d done it, and who the hell those two people were behind her. Donna looked between them all, glancing back at the Doctor and Rose for help. They offered none. Thinking fast, Donna turned back around and made a loud sobbing noise. It got quiet very quickly as everyone realized she was starting to cry. There was a chorus of “awwws” from everyone in the crowd. Lance pulled her into a soothing hug as she continued to fake sobs.  
  
The Doctor and Rose glanced at each other. She raised her eyebrows and he shrugged the tiniest bit. Everyone started applauding (except for Nerys), happy she’d returned. Donna turned her head towards the two time travellers amidst her sobbing and winked. Rose scoffed, a smirk tugging at her lips, and she shook her head at her grinning Time Lord.  
  
Donna was whisked away by her fiancée and immediate family to be consoled. There was a minute or so of confusion and uncertainty among the rest of guests; then the DJ resumed playing and the party picked right back up where it had left off.   
  
Rose nudged the Doctor with her shoulder. “Wanna dance?”  
  
He made a face. “Eh, I dunno.”   
  
“Oh, come on. Please?” She smiled up at him, eyes wide and as adorably pleading as she could make them, and rested her chin on his shoulder. That never failed. He would resist for another five seconds, then sigh and give in like it pained him to do so.  
  
“But Rose, we really need to figure out how she got into the TARDIS, and I need to do a bit of research on H.C. Clements, and…and…”   
  
She cocked her head to the side and he sighed heavily. “Alright, I give up. One dance. But after I do a quick bit of research. I don’t suppose you’ve got your mobile on you?”  
  
“Uh, I don’t think so.” She patted her pockets just in case and then shook her head. “Oh, wait a minute!” Rose plunged her hand into her jacket pocket and pulled out her phone with a tiny, “Ha!”   
  
They retreated to the corner and he whipped out the sonic screwdriver. Rose used her body to block him from most of the view of the party as he worked. She heard the sonic humming over the music and rocked back on her heels, tapping out the beat of the song onto her thigh. The humming stopped but then started back up again. Stopped. The Doctor said her name quietly. She turned around and he held up the screen for her to see. She noted the tightness in his jaw and his tense shoulders before looking down at the words on the screen.  
  
 _ **H.C. CLEMENTS.  
  
Sole Prop.   
TORCHWOOD**_  
  
Rose inhaled sharply through her nose and glanced around, half expecting Torchwood soldiers to come bursting in at any second. Had it all been an act? Was this whole reception one big trap with Donna as the bait? Were they all Torchwood employees, then, with guns hidden in their bras and under their jackets? It’d been a good six months for them since the invasion. Plenty of time to get back on their feet and if the person in charge hadn’t known the Doctor saved them, he or she might have assumed he was the one that caused it and had decided to come after them in full force. Well, she wasn’t going to back down without a fight. She didn’t know what they’d do to her, but she had a lot of ideas of what they might do to the Doctor and she would not let any of them happen. Not as long as she was still breathing.   
  
“Relax,” the Doctor murmured, putting his hands on her shoulders. “Torchwood couldn’t have gotten Donna inside the TARDIS. That would require technology beyond anything they could ever get their hands on. But,” he added, glancing around the room, “the fact that she works for a company owned by Torchwood is not to be ignored. But I don’t think anyone’s coming to take us prisoner.”  
  
She nodded and exhaled slowly. “Okay. Can I have my mobile back now?”  
  
He slipped it into her hand and she pocketed it. The DJ went immediately from one song to the next, an upbeat tune she thought she recognized. The Doctor smiled, offering her his arm. “Dame Rose, would you like to dance?”   
  
“Yes, Sir Doctor, I believe I would.”   
  
Tongue between her teeth, she slid her arm through his and together they walked out to the dance floor. And, just for a little bit, she could pretend they were simply on an ordinary jaunt. Her mother was waiting for her at home and they’d swing by later that day. She was with her Doctor and they were having fun, laughing as he twirled her then replaced his hand on her waist, shoulders and hips bumping, eyes only for each other. Rose realized after the chorus played for the first time that she, in fact, did know the song, much to his amusement, and started mouthing the chorus as they danced. He smiled at her, eyes bright with adoration.  
  
 _So reel me in, my precious girl  
Come on, take me home.  
‘Cause my body’s tired of travelling  
And my heart don’t wish to roam. _  
  
“You listen to Neil Hannon?” he asked over the music.  
  
“Not me! Mum loves him, though!” she replied without thinking.   
  
Then the penny dropped and her eyes crinkled, her lips pressing tightly together. The Doctor didn’t give her a chance to do anything else. He let go of one of her hands and pulled her in for a spin with the other. He glimpsed a small smile before twirling her again.   
  
“Here and now,” he murmured into her ear. “Just enjoy the party.”  
  
“It’s our first Christmas apart, me and mum.”   
  
“No, it’s not. Christmas 2005, remember?”  
  
“That was your fault.”  
  
“Not gonna argue that. At least this time she knows you’re alive and she’s got Pete. She’s not alone, and neither are you.”   
  
“I know, it’s just…”  
  
He started to reply with something witty to make her smile, but a person caught his eye at the edge of the dance floor: a young man minding a camcorder, taping the reception. Humans liked to get visual reminders of important days and events, like weddings, to preserve them, to have them later when they feel nostalgic or when they can no longer recall them in their memories. It gave him an idea of something he could do for Rose, assuming they had any tapes of family events in the flat somewhere. But anyway! If the man was taping the reception then he would have probably been responsible for taping the ceremony as well. Donna said she’d been halfway up the aisle before she ended up in the TARDIS, which meant he must have footage of her disappearance.  
  
He didn’t pause to explain to Rose; slipping his hand into its proper fit in hers, he pulled her through the dancers. She only protested once.   
  
The man glanced up when he saw them coming and smiled briefly. “’Ello.”  
  
“Hi there, I’m the Doctor. You’re recording everything, right? Including the ceremony?”  
  
“Before she disappeared, yeah.”  
  
“Can I see it?”  
  
He nodded and stopped the camera, taking the tape out. He pulled another one from a case next to the tripod. Placing it into the slot, he hit the rewind button on the camera. “Well, I taped the whole thing. They’ve all had a look. They said, ‘Sell it to _You’ve Been Framed!_ ’ I said, ‘More like the news.’” he laughed once and checked the screen. “Here we are.”   
  
He pressed play.   
  
The Doctor and Rose pressed tightly together so they could both have a look. It showed Donna, smiling and happy, and then abruptly a strange sort of golden dust started to swirl around her. Her smile vanished and Donna opened her mouth and screamed as she was engulfed in glowing gold. It looked like she was disintegrating.   
  
_I know what that is._ Rose thought. She wracked her brain, trying to think of where she’d seen it before. That wasn’t the kind of thing she would ever forget. But she couldn’t recall what it was or where she’d seen it. It was like there was a great black wall between her and what she wanted to know.  
  
“Can’t be,” the Doctor muttered. “Play it again?”  
  
“Clever, mind!” The cameraman smiled. “Good trick, I’ll give her that. I was clapping.”  
  
The Doctor gripped the screen to make sure it wasn’t fooling him and leaned closer, blocking Rose’s view. She sighed to herself. Donna’s scream trickled from the speaker.   
  
“But that looks like…Huon particles!” he said incredulously.   
  
“What’s that, then?”  
  
“That’s impossible. That’s…ancient. Huon energy doesn’t exist anymore,” he explained to his companion and the cameraman. “Not for billions of years.” The Doctor shook his head.   
  
“It’s so old that…” A look of horror crossed his face and he looked at Donna and Lance dancing together on the dance floor. He exhaled shakily.   
  
“Doctor, what’s wrong?” Rose asked.  
  
“It can’t be hidden by a bio-dampener!” he shouted and took off at top speed through the crowd.   
  
Rose started after him for a moment and then turned back to the cameraman. He’d be back.  
  
“Do you know what’s going on?” the cameraman asked.   
  
“No idea, but I’m sure we’ll find out real soon,” she sighed, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. Sure enough, the Doctor sprinted back into the room, leaping over the chair and shouting for her and Donna. People turned to look at him curiously and Rose bolted.  
  
“Doctor! Doctor, what’s wrong?”  
  
“They’ve found her,” he growled through his teeth. “The Santas–they’re here. We’ve got to get everyone out. The bio-dampener won’t work on Huons. It’s too old. We’ve got to get out of here, now.”  
  
“Oh, my God,” Donna whispered. “It’s all my family.”   
  
“Out the back door!”  
  
Donna had to hitch her skirt to keep up with the two of them. They ran out of the reception hall and down the lightly decorated hallways. Rose could tell from her heavy breathing that Donna was not used to running flat out like this. The Doctor pushed open the doors and the three of them skidded to a stop. Two robots wearing identical Father Christmas costumes advanced towards them, their golden instruments held like guns. The Doctor pulled the doors shut and locked them. They retreated back into the party and tried one of the glass doors on the far wall. Two Santas were waiting out there, too. One of them had a weapon; the other was holding a large remote control.   
  
“We’re trapped,” Donna realized.  
  
The Santa lifted the controller.  
  
“Doctor,” Rose whispered and pointed. “Look. Remember what happened last Christmas?”  
  
The Doctor turned around. “Oh, no,” he murmured. “There’re three of them.”  
  
“Three what?” Donna asked.  
  
“Christmas trees.”  
  
“So?”  
  
“They kill. GET AWAY FROM THE TREES!” he shouted, the two women echoing him. They shoed children away from the trees, ushering them back with their bodies, shouting at everyone to keep away. The DJ stopped playing and everyone looked at the three of them in bewilderment. Thankfully some of them listened, backing up unsurely because, after all, if someone’s yelling at you to get away from something, it was usually good to listen.  
  
Rose saw a little boy standing near a tree, arms crossed and pouting, and she scooped him right up. She dropped him several feet away by a dark-haired woman.  
  
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” she demanded.  
  
“Just stay away from the trees,” Rose told her severely.  
  
The woman’s brow wrinkled. “Who are you?”  
  
“Just keep away.”  
  
“STAY AWAY FROM THE TREES!” the Doctor repeated loudly to the crowd milling about in the center of the room.   
  
“Oh, for God’s sakes, the man’s an idiot!” Mrs. Noble protested shrilly. “Why? What’s a Christmas tree gonna…oh!” she added, smiling in delight.  
  
Rose spun around, expecting to see the trees light up with an eerie Christmas carol and the limbs to start rotating. Well, there was a festive song, but there were no madly spinning limbs. Instead, there were little red baubles floating up from the tree. She groaned softly and took a few steps backward. Everyone else, though, seemed to think it was a little show. They laughed and exclaimed pleasantly. Rose was just waiting for them to explode and rain down shards of glass or something.  
  
Then the first bauble zoomed down and exploded on the ground and all hell broke loose. One after the other they rained down, exploding and sending things and people flying. The crowd scattered, screaming, and Rose lost sight of the Doctor in the tumult. After an ornament whizzed dangerously close past her ear she reflexively ducked to the side and ended up diving under the closest table for shelter. She might’ve heard the Doctor shout her name once but she couldn’t be sure and she wasn’t about to make herself a target.   
  
The Christmas song continued all the while, a pleasant background to the horror of the present.  
  
The last of the ornaments exploded and people shushed each other, waiting to see what would happen next. There was a moment of silence, then…  
  
“Oi, Santa! Word of advice–if you’re attacking a man with a sonic screwdriver…” the Doctor shouted. His voice was magnified through the speakers when he added; “Don’t let him near the sound system.”  
  
The moment she heard the humming of the sonic screwdriver amplified over the speakers, Rose slapped her hands over her ears. She curled up into a tight ball with her hands pressed as tightly to her ears as possible. The sonic waves pulsed through the room, rattling the table, reverberating through the floor, and shaking her right down to her bones. She let out a strangled shout of pain. This was not the first time he’d done something like this and it certainly would not be the last; it was dead useful sometimes, but it always made her ears ache for ages afterwards.   
  
The sound and tremors stopped, and Rose carefully removed her hands from her ears. When no more pulse waves came, she sighed and rested her cheek against the cool metal of a table leg. Around her where the whimpers and cries of the scared and wounded, but she didn’t feel like moving, not even to help them. Dancing had been a nice little distraction, but now, curled under a table with the beginnings of tears in her eyes and a ringing in her ears, Rose was reminded of why she hadn’t wanted to leave the TARDIS today.  
  
Some people got respites after losing their mothers…and the rest didn’t. She was one of them.   
  
“Rose! Rose, where are you?”   
  
The Doctor was calling her and if she didn’t answer soon he’d think she was hurt and start to panic. Not good, considering recent events. So she rolled over and stuck her head out from underneath the tablecloth just as he called for her again. He was looking the wrong way.  
  
“Over here.”  
  
She hadn’t been speaking loudly at all, but the moment the words left her mouth he whirled around. She crawled out from underneath the table and gripped the edge to help pull herself up. He looked her up and down, looking for any signs of damage, and she smiled to show she was okay. He nodded once and went to the remains of the robot Santas.   
  
He found the remote that controlled the bomb baubles and held it while he examined one of the robot heads. Rose caught Donna’s eye as the two of them made their way towards the Doctor.  
  
“Look at that–remote control for the decorations.” He shook it. “But there’s a second remote control for the robots… They’re not scavengers anymore,” he realized quietly. “I think someone’s taken possession.”  
  
“Never mind all that,” Donna interrupted. “You’re a doctor; people have been hurt.”  
  
“Nah, they wanted you alive. Look.” He tossed her one of the baubles that hadn’t exploded. “They’re not active now.”  
  
“All the same, you could help.”  
  
“She’s right, Doctor, these people are hurt,” Rose agreed. The Doctor didn’t appear to be paying attention to her, busy listening to something inside the robot’s head.  
  
“Got to think of the bigger picture,” he muttered. He jumped up, yelling, “There’s still a signal!”  
  
“Doctor!” Rose shouted.   
  
“Rose, we don’t have time to help them,” he replied through his teeth. “Remember what these things are? Pilot fish, always pilot fish. They weren’t acting on their own, which means there’s something worse out there that wants her. The best thing we can do for these people is to get Donna away from them and stop whatever it is that wants her.” He stared into her eyes, willing her to understand. She sucked in a sharp breath and nodded. “Now come on, both of you.” His eyes flicked to Donna for not even a moment before he ran out of the room with the robot head. Rose quickly followed.  
  
Outside in the open air, away from the people and interfering walls and equipment, the Doctor used the sonic screwdriver to try and get a lock on the signal. Apparently someone had phoned the paramedics because an ambulance rolled up the drive with lights on. Donna joined the Doctor and Rose just a few moments later and he explained what he was doing before she could even ask.  
  
“But why is it me? What have I done?” she asked.  
  
“I don’t know, but if we find the controller, we’ll find that out. Oh,” the Doctor murmured. He walked around Donna, looking at his screwdriver, and held it up towards the sky. “It’s up there. …Something in the sky.”  
  
Rose looked up at the sky, lifted her hand to block the sun, and squinted. There wasn’t anything up there, not that she could see, though it would be just their luck if a giant spaceship were hovering invisibly over London. She turned around and scanned the sky for anything unusual. An odd shimmer, or a refracted cloud, or something zooming around that wasn’t a plane. There was nothing.  
  
“Do you know what we’re lookin’ for?”  
  
“No; could be anything,” he replied. “Do you see anything?”  
  
“No-ope. Nothin’s up there, Doctor.”   
  
“Aarrrgh, I lost the signal. Donna!” He pocketed the screwdriver as he ran towards the ginger woman. “Donna, we’ve got to get to your office. H.C. Clements. I think that’s where it all started. Lance–it is Lance?–Lance, can you give us a lift?”  
  
He didn’t want for an answer before sprinting towards the parking lot.  
  
“Hold on.” Donna pointed at her fiancée. “Have you been drinking?”  
  
“Oh, I’ve had a couple, yeah,” he confessed.  
  
“No, I’ll do the driving,” she told them and marched purposefully towards her car.  
  
“Uh-uh, no, you’re not insured to drive my car!”  
  
“Alright, then we’ll take mine!”  
  
Donna was the proud owner of a blue smart car that looked like it would barely hold two, never mind four. The Doctor poked his head in and, after a quick inspection, he realized the car was, in fact, _not_ bigger on the inside. He growled a few insults about their species and the current century until Rose elbowed him in the ribs and jerked her head towards the door.  
  
The Doctor, with his long arms and legs, had a hell of a time squeezing in the back seat; he had to hunch his shoulders and turn his head awkwardly to the side in order to fit. Rose briefly entertained the idea of riding on the roof but the Doctor somehow managed to scoot over enough to make room for her and her hips. For once, though she dare not admit it, she was glad she was short. Donna and Lance rode up front. She started the car and eased out of the parking lot. Rose expected her to start speeding in the direction of her workplace with all due haste, but when Donna only accelerated to the speed limit Rose realized she might not be a ‘high-speed chase’ kind of woman; you would’ve thought they were on their way to a bloody picnic from the way she was driving.   
  
The Doctor’s face was twisted in a grimace and every time they so much as went over a slightly uneven patch his head bumped into the ceiling. She almost laughed.  
  
“Not exactly a chase, is it?” the Time Lord complained.  
  
“Oi! There’s a speed limit. I am not going to jail in my wedding dress.”  
  
“It’s like driving a hairdryer.”   
  
Rose shook her head. “No, I think my hairdryer’s bigger.”   
  
“Hold on, speed bumps,” Donna warned.   
  
Rose braced herself. It was like riding in the back of that old rickety school bus. One bump and her bum would go flyin’ off the seat. One time she swore she went a good foot off the seat. She didn’t go nearly as high now, but there wasn’t any seat belt holding her down. The Doctor had it the worst, though, and his head thumped against the top a few times.   
  
He exhaled through his nose. “That’s alright. No rush.”  
  
“Speak for yourself,” Rose grumbled. She felt suffocated. If she didn’t get out of this dinky thing soon she’d probably scream.


	4. Huon Particles

  
“But what do they want with me?” Donna asked what everyone was thinking.  
  
What did the Santas–or, rather, the controller–what did they want with Donna? She was no one big and powerful–just a temp. Rose knew from experience that the robots only cared about getting to their target. Everyone else was just an obstacle to be destroyed. Last Christmas she’d been one of the few to get past when they were after the Doctor. This year, he’d been reduced to a mere obstacle. Which meant Donna was, somehow, more important than Time’s Champion.  
  
The Doctor stopped assaulting the computer and straightened up. “Somehow you’ve been dosed with Huon energy, and that’s a problem because Huon energy hasn’t existed since the Dark Times. The only place you’d find a Huon particle now is in a remnant in the Heart of the TARDIS. See? That’s what happened.”  
  
Donna seemed to understand that this wasn’t a good thing. She was staring at him, mouth open in worry, with her hand pressed against her stomach.  
  
“Say,” the Doctor began, grabbing a mug off the desk, “that this is the TARDIS, and that’s you.” He picked up a pencil. “The particles inside you activated. The two sets of particles magnetized and– _WHAP_!” He tossed the pencil into the mug. “You were pulled inside the TARDIS.”  
  
“I’m a pencil inside a mug?”  
  
“Yes, you are.” He gave the mug a shake. “4-H. Sums you up.” Setting it down on the table, he went to find another computer to hack. “Lance, what was H.C. Clements working on?”  
  
Donna was scared and this time there was no bravado to mask it. When the Doctor moved and revealed Rose standing behind him, their eyes met and she saw naked fear in the older woman’s eyes. She wished she could console her, but there was nothing she could say that would help. Because she knew where she’d seen Huon particles now. When she’d looked into the TARDIS. She’d had the Time Vortex in her head and the Heart in her body. If the Doctor hadn’t intervened, she would’ve died–but whether from the Vortex, the Heart, or both, she didn’t know.  
  
The Doctor found an abnormality in the official building plans and led them down to the reception level and the other elevator to prove it.  
  
“Are you telling me this building’s got a secret floor?” Lance asked skeptically.  
  
“No, I’m _showing_ you this building’s got a secret floor.”   
  
Rose smiled, lips pressed together, and held down a laugh.  
  
“It needs a key,” Donna pointed out.  
“I don’t.” The Doctor sonicked the lock on the Lower Basement button in the lift. Donna’s eyebrows lifted but she recovered quickly. Lance’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head and he openly gawked at the Doctor and Rose.   
  
“Right, then. Thanks you two. We can handle this.” The Doctor smiled and tucked the sonic into his pocket. Rose joined him in the lift. “See you later.”  
  
“No way, Martian. You’re the man who keeps saving my life–budge up, Rose,” she added, stepping quickly into the lift. “I’m not letting you out of my sight.”  
  
“Going down.”  
  
Lance remained outside.   
  
“Lance,” Donna ordered.   
  
“M-maybe I should go to the police.”   
  
“Inside.”   
  
He sighed and did as he was told without further protest. Rose stepped back next to the Doctor so there was room for him. She was beginning to think Donna had been lying earlier when she told them about Lance wearing her down about marriage. The man would obey his own shadow if it started barking orders at him. Like Mickey, long ago; only he’d toughened up over time after being around the Doctor and after meeting Rickey. Lance probably wouldn’t have the chance and would not be wearing the pants in the relationship.   
  
She wasn’t sure if she liked Donna yet. The jury was still out on that one.   
  
“To honor and obey,” the Doctor deadpanned.   
  
“Tell me about it, mate.”  
  
“Oi!” Donna snapped.  
  
Rose elbowed the Doctor and cracked a grin when he looked at her. He smiled in response. The lift descended quickly, though not nearly fast enough for Rose. The silence was so far beyond awkward that she was afraid to even breathe too loud. The doors opened to a cold, damp tunnel with an eerie green glow. They four of them stepped out into the tunnel and Rose shivered, pulling her jacket tighter. It smelled like wet pavement and mold and her nose wrinkled.   
  
“What is this place?” she asked.  
  
“Dunno,” the Doctor replied. He looked from one end of the tunnel to the other. “Let’s find out.”  
  
“Do you think Mr. Clements knows about this place?” Donna wondered.  
  
“The mysterious H.C. Clements? I think he’s part of it. Oh, look–transport.” He bounded over to a door and sonicked the lock. Opening it, he poked his head in, and his voice echoed gleefully when he spoke, “I’ve always wanted to ride one of these.”  
  
The Doctor backed out of the storage room, pulling a Segway with him. “Here we are, then. There’s only three in here so, Rose–you’ll have to ride with me.”   
  
That proved to be more difficult than it sounded. Each scooter was only designed for one rider at a time. She had to stand pressed tightly to his back with her feet almost on the edge and her arms around his waist so she wouldn’t fall off. Thank God the Doctor had good balance and managed to find a good spot to stand that kept them both balanced.   
  
The three scooters rolled side by side down the green-lit tunnels in silence. Rose rested her cheek between the Doctor’s shoulder blades and watched Donna. She saw the older woman’s lips press together, a smile pulling at her lips, and her shoulders shaking. Donna glanced at the Doctor. Rose knew him well enough to know that he either had a giddy grin on his face or he was looking stern. Whichever look he was trying to sport Rose figured it was funny enough because Donna suddenly sputtered out a laugh. Looking at the Doctor again she laughed harder, bending forward in her mirth. Rose felt the Doctor’s body shake underneath her cheek and she grinned, biting her lower lip.   
  
She knew how ridiculous it looked: the Oncoming Storm and the Valiant Child riding on a Segway together. If their enemies could see them now, they’d probably all die laughing.   
  
Donna shrieked with laughter beside them. She heard the cackle from deep within the Doctor’s chest and it reverberated throughout her. A slightly hysterical giggle bubbled up through her lips and she buried her face in his jacket to smother it. If she started laughing now she might end up crying.  
  
The breaks on their Segway squeaked as the Doctor stopped them. Rose was close enough to feel the shift in his muscles and stepped down so he could get off. His hand tightened around her arm for half a second as he passed her on the way to the door. The sign on it said _Authorized Personnel Only_ in blocked letters. Above it was an all-too-familiar logo, a series of hexagons arranged into a ‘T’ above the word _Torchwood_. Rose’s lip curled at the sight.  
  
He turned the wheel on the door and hefted it open. Inside was a small, lit room containing a single metal ladder. The Doctor peered around inside then stepped out. “Wait here,” he ordered. “Just need to get my bearings. Don’t,” he added, pointing his finger at them severely, lingering on Rose, “do anything. And don’t wander off.”  
  
“’Kay,” Rose sighed.   
  
Donna took a step towards the door. “You better come back.”  
  
The Doctor grinned at her. “I couldn’t get rid of you if I tried. Keep an eye on Rose; make sure she doesn’t fall over.”  
  
“I’m _fine_.” Rose grumbled as he started up the ladder.  
  
“No, you’re really not, sweetheart.” Donna turned around. “You look like hell. …It’ll be okay, you’ll see. My mum was devastated, too, after Gran died, but she got better.”  
  
“No, you don’t understand. Mum isn’t dead. She’s in another universe. Those Cybermen and Daleks, uh–you saw them, Lance, didn’t you?” She looked at the black man.   
  
He pressed his lips together and nodded. “Yeah. Saw ‘em.”  
  
“Well, we were there. Me, the Doctor, Mum–we were trying to stop it from happening. Those Cybermen came from another universe parallel to ours. Bit different, but alike in a lot of ways. Following me so far?”  
  
“I think so,” Donna said.   
  
“We defeated the Cybermen over on that parallel world, but that universe’s version of my mum died. It’s a long, long story, but when the Cybermen came through to our world, some of the people from the other universe came, too, includin’ the parallel version of my dad. Dad died when I was a baby, so Mum went with him, and the plan was for me to go to, but I didn’t… I couldn’t leave the Doctor.” She paused and rubbed her lips together. When she spoke again, her voice was choked, “He needs me and–and I love him.   
  
“I knew staying here meant I’d lose her, but I didn’t… It didn’t really _hit_ me until afterwards.” Rose swallowed and wiped the tears from her eyes. “I…I feel almost like I’ve betrayed her. It’s always been the two of us, fendin’ for ourselves and takin’ care of each other. But I kept goin’ with the Doctor and leavin’ her behind, and now I’ve done it for good.”  
  
Donna looked at her considering and licked her lips. “I just have one question: did your Mum choose to stay there?”  
  
“She could’ve come back right after me, but she didn’t. So, yeah, I think she did.”  
  
Donna pulled Rose into a hug and patted her back soothingly. “Then no, Rose, I don’t think you betrayed her. You made your choice and she made hers. She’s happy, right? I wager you will be, too, one day. She’s got her man and you got yours.”  
  
Rose laughed once. “I told you, Donna, we’re not married.”  
  
“Don’t matter. I see the way you look at each other. Especially earlier when you were dancing! Lookin’ at you two… It was like I was at your wedding reception!” she laughed and Rose smiled.  
  
The Doctor dropped down from the ladder with a grunt. “Thames flood barrier! Right on top of us.”  
  
Rose pulled away from Donna, eyebrows raised. “You’re kiddin’ me.”  
  
“Nope! Torchwood must’ve snuck in and built this place underneath.”   
  
“What? There’s, like, a secret base hidden underneath a major London landmark?” Donna gaped at him, completely stunned.  
  
“I know! Unheard of,” he agreed with a wink at Rose.   
  
Donna looked shrewdly between them. “What else is there?”  
  
“Torchwood’s main base at Canary Wharf, Nestine Consciousness lair underneath the London Eye… There’s also a family of Oerthians currently living in the gardens of Buckingham palace.” He chuckled to himself and walked past them.   
  
“You’re telling me that story later,” Rose ordered.  
  
He smiled fondly at her over his shoulder. “Come on, I think we might’ve found where this glow is coming from.”   
  
Leaving the Segways behind, Rose, Donna, and Lance followed the Doctor down the passageway. The green light grew brighter and brighter until they came to the end of the tunnel where it was emitting from panels on the walls, highlighting the caution signs and warnings stamped in black ink on the walls. The Doctor pushed open a door with the Torchwood logo and looked around curiously.  
  
“Ooh,” he murmured, shoving the door out of his way. “Look at this!”  
  
They filed into the room, the Doctor running ahead to get a look at everything. They were in some sort of laboratory, the kind of place you needed top marks in your a-levels and in university before you’d even be told about its existence. There were all manners of machines which only the Doctor had a prayer of discerning. Many of them consisted of a lot of clear, liquid-filled pipes and containers, twisted and arranged intricately, like a water clock.   
  
The Doctor darted around, all agog at being surrounded by what he called particle extruders. She and Donna followed him further into the room. Lance, overwhelmed by everything around him, remained behind them uncertainly. The Doctor tapped on one of the glass tubes with his knuckle and looked it up and down.  
  
“Brilliant,” he murmured. He ducked down and tried to look up one of the wider pipes. “They’ve been manufacturing Huon particles. In case my people got rid of Huons, they unraveled the atomic structure.”  
  
“ _Your_ people? Who are they?” Lance demanded. “What company do you represent?”  
  
“Oh, I’m a freelancer. But this lot are rebuilding them.”  
  
“How?” Rose asked, running her fingers down one of the thinner pipes. She felt a strange tingling where the tips of her fingers made contact with the glass, like the tiny bubbles inside the tube were brushing against them. She drew her hand back, curling her fingers. The tingling faded but she felt the TARDIS probing her mind curiously in a way she never had before.  
  
The ship had felt that? Only vaguely listening to the Doctor explain how Torchwood had been using the river to make the particles, Rose touched her hand to the tube again. The tingling picked right back up where it had left off and something akin to surprise filtered through the mental link between herself and the TARDIS. The Doctor had said earlier that the only remaining Huon was inside the Heart of the TARDIS–the ship must have sensed it through her.  
  
“No,” Rose sighed and turned from the tubes. “I meant how would they even know about them? You said they’re billions of years gone. How would Torchwood have found out?”  
  
“I don’t know,” he answered grimly. He was holding a vial of the liquid in his hand and she wondered if her fingers would tingle when she touched it. “But I’m not sure how they got their hands on technology advanced enough to effectively probe that breech, either.”  
  
Donna reached forward and tapped the vial with her finger. “That’s inside me?”  
  
Wordlessly, the Doctor turned the tip of the vial to the left and the clear liquid inside began to glow with a golden light. A moment later, Donna’s entire body started to shine with the same light, illuminating her like a Christmas tree.   
  
A moment after that, Rose felt the tingling travel in a wave up her body. She drew in a breath of air and a wordless melody drifted through Rose’s mind. It was a feminine voice, light and airy, and…familiar, like a dream once had and never quite forgotten. It was beautiful. It was sad. She could listen to it forever. She felt like she could tear down the sky itself and not be harmed. She felt like she was a child in the safety her mother’s arms.   
  
The Doctor and Donna were saying words that didn’t quite reach her. Her eyes slid closed, but not before they flicked to Lance and saw that he just so happened to be glancing at her. Dimly she registered the way his eyes widened in disbelief, but it wasn’t the song, so it didn’t matter.  
  
Eyes closed, breath held, mouth shut; all she knew was the song in her head. Her heart beat faster, her hands curled into fists. She wanted to throw her head back and howl to the universe.   
  
_He is the last Lord of Time, she is the last TARDIS, and she is the only Wolf._  
  
The song faded quite abruptly and her entire being cried out at its loss. With a shuddering gasp, she opened her eyes. She licked her lips and shook her head quickly. No one was even paying her any attention, not with the Doctor going off on one of his manic monologues, hopping and rocking and gesturing wildly.  
  
“–of your life, walking down the aisle–oh, your body's a battleground! There’s a chemical war inside! Adrenaline, acetylcholine–WHAM go the endorphins, oh, you're cooking! Yeah, you're like a walking oven! A pressure cooker, a microwave–all churning away, the particles reach boiling point–SHAZAM!”  
  
Donna smacked him, harder than before, and he stumbled back a few steps. “What did I do this time?” he protested indignantly, his voice still up a few octaves.   
  
“Are you enjoying this?” Donna demanded.   
  
The Doctor shifted his weight back and forth, lowering his eyes penitently, like a child after being scolded by his mum.   
  
Donna took a deep breath and let it out. She took a few steps forward. “Right. Just tell me. These particles–are they dangerous? Am I safe?”  
  
“Yes,” he nodded.  
  
“Doctor,” she admonished, “if your lot got rid of Huon particles, why did they do that?”  
  
The Doctor’s face reflected a millennia’s worth of sadness and his voice was deep and serious, “Because they were deadly.”  
  
She shook her head once and looked away. “Oh, my God.”  
  
“I’ll sort it out, Donna,” he promised her quickly. “Whatever’s been done to you, I’ll reverse it. I’m not about to let another mother lose her daughter.”  
  
Sudden, omnipresent hissing, loud and deep and ugly, slid through the room. Rose literally jumped half a foot in the air at the sound, her mind going back to an incident they had not long ago with some snakes. Amidst the hissing came a voice that sent shivers down Rose’s spine, speaking, “Ooh, she is long since lost.”  
  
The hissing continued and the wall before them labeled _LAB 003_ slowly started to rise. Rose moved closer to the Doctor.  
  
“I have waited so long,” the hissing voice continued, decidedly female.   
  
The wall continued to retreat upwards, revealing another room off to the first and easily two times bigger. The most prominent feature was the bloody great hole in the middle of the floor.   
  
“Hibernating at the edge of the universe…until the secret heart was uncovered and called out to waken!”  
  
Rose, the Doctor, and Donna didn’t notice the dozen robots, standing on two levels of walkways against each wall, until they moved. The three of them eyed the guns trained on them nervously, but the robots didn’t fire. They needed Donna alive; as long as she was around them the robots wouldn’t risk shooting her. The Doctor sauntered forward with his hands in his pockets and examined the hole.   
  
“Someone’s been digging. …Oh, very Torchwood. Drilled by laser. How far down does it go?”  
  
“Down and down, all the way to the center of the Earth!” the voice replied.  
  
“Really? Seriously, what for?”  
  
“An energy source,” Rose guessed.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Well, Torchwood was messin’ with the breach lookin’ for free energy. An’ back on Krop Tor, Danny told me they worked for the Torchwood archive. Remember what they were drillin’ for?”  
  
The Doctor’s eyes widened and he murmured, “Good point.” Raising his voice, he turned away from Rose and addressed the speaker, “Is that what they were after? Energy?”  
  
“Foolish humans! They finally noticed what was beneath them and tried to reach it. So curious; so ignorant.”  
  
“Only a madman talks to thin air, and trust me, you don’t want to make me mad. Where are you?”  
  
“High in the sky, floating so high on Christmas night.”  
  
“I didn’t come all this way to talk on the intercom! Come on, let’s have a look at you!” he goaded.   
  
“Who are you with such command?!”  
  
“I’m the Doctor!”  
  
“Prepare your best medicines, Doctor Man, for you will be sick at heart!” she proclaimed and appeared before them on the platform in a flash of blue light. Rose recoiled at the sight.  
  
It was a spider. A huge, blood red spider, with the body of a tarantula, all hairy rear and long legs. From where the head should have been protruded a humanoid torso with two pincer-ended arms and a horned head with eight eyes across it. The whole body gleamed in the light. She thrashed her legs and pincers, hissing and weaving her torso in a threatening manner.   
  
The Doctor was completely thunderstruck. “Racnoss,” he breathed. “But that’s impossible. You’re one of the Racnoss!”  
  
The spider woman pushed her body higher into the air, like a human drawing herself up to full height. “ _Empress_ of the Racnoss!” she declared with another hiss.   
  
The Doctor walked towards her, his shock giving way to curiosity. “If you’re the Empress, where are the rest of the Racnoss? Or…are you the only one?”  
  
“Such a sharp mind,” she responded.   
  
“That’s it–last of your kind,” he murmured, leaning towards his companions to explain. “The Racnoss come from the Dark Times, billions of years ago. Billions. They were carnivores–omnivores. They devoured whole planets.”  
  
“Racnoss are born starving!” the Empress snarled at him. “Is that our fault?”  
  
“They eat people?” Donna asked, horrified.   
  
The Doctor swallowed. “H.C. Clements, did he wear those–those, um, black-and-white shoes?”  
  
“He did. We used to laugh. We used to call him ‘The Fat Cat in Spats.’”  
  
The Doctor pointed at the web on the ceiling. They followed his finger upwards and noticed a pair of spats protruding from the web. Donna recognized them at once.  
  
“Oh, my God!” She looked like she was about to be sick and her eyes flicked around the web, noticing a few more limbs visible here and there, and she thought of the people that had mysteriously “quit” over the last few months. Her stomach nearly rebelled.  
  
“Mm, my Christmas dinner!” the giant spider cackled.  
  
“You shouldn’t even exist,” the Doctor told her. “Way back in history, the fledgling empires went to war against the Racnoss. They were wiped out!” he added loudly with a look at the Empress.   
  
“Except for me.”  
  
Donna took a step forward. “But that’s what I’ve got inside me, that Huon energy thing. Oi! Look at me, lady. I’m talking. Where do I fit in?”   
  
Rose noticed someone inching down the stairs towards the spider. It was Lance, holding an axe in his hand. Donna must’ve already seen him and was distracting her so he could get close enough to attack. Rose tried to keep her eyes off of him, though she wondered how an axe would be able to help.  
  
“How come I get all stacked up with these Huon particles?” Donna demanded. The Empress started to turn towards Lance. “Look at me, you! Look me in the eye and tell me!”  
  
“The bride is _so_ feisty!” she laughed.  
  
“Yes, I am! And I don’t know what you are, you big…thing.” she gestured with her hands. Lance was almost upon her, axe raised. “But a spider’s just a spider. And an ax is an axe. NOW DO IT!”  
  
Lance raised the axe and the Empress jerked her torso around. She let out a snarling hiss and lifted up just a bit higher, but she didn’t move to attack. Lance froze with the axe raised and his look of fear melted away into a laugh. His laugh turned into a cackle and the Empress joined in. Lance dropped the axe and tapped one of the Empress’s legs.   
  
Rose clenched her fists angrily and looked up at the Doctor. He was glaring at the pair on the platform darkly.  
  
“That was a good one,” Lance chortled. “Your face!”  
  
“Lance is funny,” the Empress told the three down below.   
  
Donna shook her head disbelievingly. “What?”  
  
“I’m sorry,” the Doctor murmured, turning towards her.   
  
“Sorry for what? Lance, don’t be so stupid! GET HER!”  
  
“Donna,” Rose said quietly.   
  
Lance stared at her for a second as if he couldn’t believe it. “God, she’s thick. Months, I’ve had to put up with her. Months! A woman who can’t even point to Germany on a map.”  
  
Donna’s jaw moved up and down but no sound came out. She looked at the Doctor and Rose for help. They were looking at her sadly. She swallowed thickly. “I don’t understand.”  
  
“How did you meet him?” the Doctor asked her.  
  
“In the office.”  
  
“He made you coffee.”  
  
“What?”  
  
Rose looked back at the tubes and vats of huon particles. “In liquid form,” she murmured, realizing.  
  
“What do you know? The blonde is the smart one.” he sneered at them. Walking around the Empress’s legs, he went on, “Every day, I made you coffee.”  
  
“You had to be dosed with liquid particles over six months.” the Doctor explained.   
  
“He was poisoning me?” she realized quietly. Rose nodded.  
  
The Doctor glared at Lance venomously. “It was all there in the job title–the Head of Human _Resources_.”  
  
“This time, it’s personnel.” Lance smirked and he and the Empress chuckled again.   
  
Donna still didn’t seem to comprehend everything. “But…we were getting married.”   
  
“Well, I could risk you running off. I had to say yes.” Lance’s voice turned mocking. “And then I was stuck with a woman who thinks the height of excitement is a new flavor of Pringle.”  
  
Donna stared at him, taking his abuse silently. With every word her face grew even sadder. Rose was torn between wanting to hug her and wanting to yell slurs at the man and tell him to shut up.  
  
“Oh, I had to sit there and listen to all that yap, yap, yap!” he went on. “‘Ooh, Brad and Angelina! Is Posh pregnant? _X Factor_ , Atkins Diet, Feng Shui, Split Ends, text me, text me, text me!’ Dear God, the never-ending fountain, of fat, stupid trivia! …I deserve a medal!”  
  
Rose gritted her teeth. “You want one? Because I’d be more than happy to shove it up your arse!”  
  
Lance laughed once mockingly and opened his arms in invitation.   
  
“What’s she offered you? The Empress of the Racnoss,” the Doctor asked. “What are you, her consort?”  
  
“It’s better than a night with her.”  
  
“But I love you,” Donna told him plaintively.   
  
Lance looked at her pityingly. “That’s what made it easy.”  
  
Donna looked so alone in that moment that Rose couldn’t help but put her hand on the woman’s shoulder, glaring up at Lance with renewed venom. This whole day was his fault. She hoped he’d trip and fall down the hole.  
  
“It’s like you said, Doctor–the big picture–what’s the point of it all if the Human Race is nothing? That’s what the Empress can give me. A chance to…go out there. To see it. The size of it all.” Launce paused and his eyebrows furrowed. “I think you understand that, don’t you, Doctor?”  
  
The Empress hissed loudly. “Who is this little physician?”  
  
“She said Martian.”  
  
The Doctor walked around behind Rose and Donna to get closer to the hole. “Oh, I’m sort of…homeless.” He peered down at it and asked, “But the point is, what’s down here? The Racnoss are extinct. What’s gonna help you 4,000 miles down? That’s just the molten core of the Earth, isn’t it?”  
  
Lance titled his head to the side. “I think he wants us to talk.”  
  
“I think so, too,” the Empress agreed.  
  
“Well, tough. All we need is Donna. Though, I think your little girlfriend might be worth keeping around.”  
  
“Don’t you dare,” the Doctor growled dangerously at the same time Rose snapped, “Go to Hell!”   
  
“Kill this chattering little Doctor Man!” the Empress commanded.  
  
“Don’t you hurt him!” Donna shouted, trying to shield him with her body.  
  
“No, no, Donna,” the Doctor said quietly and pushed her away. “It’s alright.”  
  
“No! I won’t let ‘em!”   
  
The Empress lifted herself higher into the air, shouting, “AT ARMS!” And the robots turned their guns towards the Doctor, Rose, and Donna once more.  
  
He held up his hands. “Ah, now–except…”  
  
“Take aim!”  
  
“Well, I just want to point out the obvious–”  
  
“They won’t hit the bride. They’re such very good shots.”   
  
“Just, just, just, just–hold on, hold on, just a tuck, just a tiny, little–just a tick.” The Doctor waited until he was sure he had their interest, before continuing; “If you think about it, the particles activated in Donna and drew her inside my spaceship.”  
  
He pulled the vial of Huon out of his pocket. “So, reverse it…” he twisted the nozzle and the particles glowed once more, followed swiftly by Donna.   
  
Rose sucked in a breath as the song flared to life in her mind once more and a tingle raced up her body. She closed her eyes. Swallowing, she tilted her head back, and once again had to fight the urge to do something completely mad. She felt powerful, she felt safe–and dimly, she registered that it was only happening because the Doctor had activated the Huon. If her mind wasn’t filled with the song and the sense of the TARDIS rapidly approaching, she might’ve thought that it was a bad thing.  
  
The song faded as quickly as it had come and when she opened her eyes she jumped, startled. They were inside the TARDIS. “What the hell?” she whispered, turning around.   
  
The TARDIS brushed against her mind and the emotion she felt coming from the ship was definitely concern. Rose was more than a little worried herself. Once could be written off as coincidence, but twice? No. She was reacting to the Huon particles. Not as strongly as Donna was, but her body was definitely doing something. It had to be because she’d once had the Heart–Huon included–in her body. It’d obviously left some sort of mark, but nothing too serious or she wouldn’t be standing here right now.   
  
Donna sucked in a sharp, shuddering breath, her shoulders shaking. Rose said her name quietly. The woman looked up with tear-filled eyes and she immediately walked into Rose’s open arms. Donna’s shuddering breaths were loud in her ear, but she never uttered so much as a whimper. Rose hugged her tightly and patted her on the back. Glancing over at the Doctor, she saw him watching them glumly from over by the console.   
  
It was just a bad day all around.  
  
“We’ve arrived,” the Doctor announced, subdued. “Want to see?”  
  
“Where are we?” Rose asked.  
  
“Weren’t you listening?”  
  
“Not really, no.”  
  
He rolled his eyes. “We’re in the past, about 4.6 billion years, to the day the Earth was formed. If the Racnoss buried something at the planet’s core, then it’s been there since the beginning.” He swung the monitor around to have a look outside. “We’re going to find out what.”  
  
Frowning, he added, “That scanners a bit small. May be your way’s best, Donna.”   
  
He went over to the door and motioned to them. “Come on.”  
  
Donna inhaled deeply and stepped out of the hug, wiping her eyes, and followed Rose over to the doors. The Doctor told them they’d be the first to ever see this, to which she replied, “All I want to see is my bed.”  
  
The Doctor grinned slightly and put his hands on the door handles. “Rose Tyler, Donna Noble, welcome…to the creation of the Earth.”   
  
He pulled the doors open wide and shifted aside so the two women could see. He stood behind them, hand resting on the edge of the door, and they gazed out in wonder. Before them was a mass of rocks, drifting aimlessly through space, and beyond them clouds of gasses, blues, pinks, oranges, and greens, lit by a small orange star. It was beautiful.  
  
“There’s no solar system, not yet,” the Doctor murmured. “Only dust and rocks and gas.” He pointed over Rose’s head to the star in the distance. “There’s the Sun over there, brand new. Just beginning to burn.”  
  
Shaking her head, Donna asked, “Where’s the Earth?”   
  
“There is no Earth,” Rose replied.  
  
“No, there is,” he said. “It’s all around us…in the dust.”   
  
Donna looked up at him and exhaled quietly. “Puts the wedding in perspective. Lance was right. We’re just…tiny,” she whispered the last word.   
  
“No, but that's what you do.” he nudged her. “The human race–making sense out of chaos. Marking it out with–with weddings and Christmas and calendars.” His voice dropped to an awed murmur once more. “This whole process is beautiful, but only if it's being observed.”  
  
“I’ve seen it end,” Rose realized softly. “Now I’m gonna see it begin.”  
  
Donna looked at her. “You’ve seen the end of the world?”  
  
Rose nodded. “My very first trip. The sun swallows the planet, and everything in between. In the end it’s just a bunch of rocks again.”  
  
A particularly large chunk of rock floated by the TARDIS at that moment and they watched it go.   
  
“Eventually gravity takes hold,” the Doctor said. “Say, one big rock, heavier than the others, starts to pull other rocks towards it. All the dust and rocks and elements get pulled in; everything, piling in until you get…” he held his hand out in front of him, fingers curled like they were holding a ball.  
  
“The Earth,” Donna finished.   
  
“But the question is… What was that first rock?”  
  
As if on cue, something emerged from the gas fairly close to them. It was a circle with a dozen large spikes protruding from it, like some sort of star.   
  
“The Racnoss,” the Doctor whispered.   
  
The Doctor raced back up the ramp to the console and started spinning one of the wheels. “Hold on. The Racnoss are hiding from the war. What’s it doing?”  
  
“Exactly what you said!”  
  
All of the rocks in the immediate area were being drawn towards the ship, like matter being pulled towards a black hole. The Doctor rejoined them by the door. The rocks were sticking to the ship, forming a thick shell around it, and the Doctor let out a noise of understanding.  
  
“They didn’t just bury something at the center of the Earth. They became the center of the Earth. The first rock.”  
  
The TARDIS shuddered violently and Rose was knocked back into the Doctor. He barely managed to keep them both from falling over. He pushed her up the ramp and reached around Donna to push the doors shut. He raced up the ramp towards the console as the ship shuddered again.  
  
Rose felt something like a tugging behind her stomach. She gripped the edge of the console to keep herself up right. Donna latched onto it beside her as another tremor rippled through the ship. The TARDIS hummed angrily as she was yanked through time against her will. The Doctor lost his balance and fell to the floor.   
  
“What the hell’s it doing?” Donna shouted over the rumbling.   
  
The Doctor pulled himself back up and zipped around the controls. “Remember that little trick I pulled–particles pulling particles?” He kicked up a lever with his foot, flipping switches and turning nozzles. “Well, it works in reverse. They’re pulling us back!”  
  
“Can’t you stop it?” Rose asked. That tugging feeling behind her navel was becoming almost painful.  
  
“Hasn’t this thing got a hand brake?” Donna demanded. “Cant you reverse or warp or beam or something?”  
  
“Backseat driver,” he muttered. “OH! Wait a minute!” From its spot underneath the far side of the console, the Doctor pulled out the extrapolator he’d kept after their incident with Margaret. “The extrapolator!” he announced and banged it down on the controls. “Can’t stop us, but it should give us a good bump!”  
  
“What do ya mean, a bump?” Rose shouted.   
  
The Doctor didn’t respond, picking up the abusive mallet, and slammed it into the extrapolator. They felt the familiar bump as they landed and the Doctor dropped the mallet, ushering them towards the door.  
  
“We’re about two hundred yards to the right,” he told them as the emerged. “Come on!”  
  
He took off running down the hall and Donna, skirt hitched, followed. Rose shut the door behind her so neither Lance nor a robot could get inside then run after them. The Doctor lead them back around the corner to the door that lead up to the Thames. Rose realized that their Segways were gone, but she didn’t have time to wonder about that. Pulling out the stethoscope he kept in his pocket, the Doctor put the earpieces into his ears and placed the chest piece against the metal of the door.  
  
“But what do we do?” Donna panted.  
  
“I don’t know. I make it up as I go along. But trust me, I’ve got a history.”  
  
“Every time we make a plan, it always fails,” Rose puffed. She got her breathing under control relatively quickly and pushed the hair out of her face.   
  
“But I still don’t understand,” Donna curled her hands in frustration. “I’m full of particles, but what for?”  
  
“There’s a Racnoss web at the center of the Earth,” the Doctor glanced at them. “But my people unraveled their power source.” Turning back to his work, “The Huon particles ceased to exist–”  
  
If he’d looked at them for just a moment longer he would’ve noticed the pair of gloved hands that clamped around the mouths of his companions. If he hadn’t had earplugs in his ears, muffling the world around him except for his own voice, he would’ve heard their quiet struggling. And he would’ve been able to stop the small group of robots from carrying them away.   
  
“They’ve just been in hibernation for billions of years,” he went on. “Frozen. Dead. Kaput! So you’re the new key. Brand new particles–living particles! They need you to open it and neither of you have ever been this quiet.”  
  
He turned around, expecting to see them staring blankly at him or Rose staring at something important and waiting for him to notice (she liked doing that), but instead he found he was alone. He groaned as he looked up and down the hall and saw no sign of either of them. They both had habits of wandering off, but he highly doubted either of them would risk doing that with a bloodthirsty Racnoss in the next room.   
  
Which probably meant, of course, that at some point in the last thirty seconds they’d managed to get captured, without him hearing a thing. He was impressed.


	5. Cry of the Wolf

  
After useless struggling and two vocabularies worth of curses and insults–Rose’s being significantly larger and containing many from alien languages–she and Donna found themselves trapped up in the web on the ceiling. Lance, to their surprise, was up there as well. Rose was just glad she hadn’t been put between them. She stopped struggling, figuring it probably would not be a good idea to fall as there was no way she’d be able to avoid plummeting into the hole beneath them.   
  
“I hate you,” Donna snarled at Lance.   
  
“Yeah, I think we’ve gone a bit beyond that now, sweetheart,” Lance replied.   
  
“My golden couple,” the Empress hissed below them. “Together at last, with this girl to bare witness to the union!” She cackled. “Tell me, do you want to be released?”  
  
“Yes!” all three of them shouted at once.   
  
“You’re supposed to say ‘I do.’”   
  
Lance scoffed. “No way.”  
  
The Empress hissed, “Say it!”   
  
Lance and Donna looked at each other for a moment. “I do,” Lance said flatly.  
  
Donna shook her head. “I do,” she agreed mockingly.  
  
All three of them looked at Rose next. She looked between them and made a face. “Why do I have to say it? I’m not even getting married. And why am I even up here?!”   
  
The Empress was unimpressed.  
  
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, okay. Fine. Whatever. I do.”  
  
“I don’t,” the Racnoss cackled. She stretched up and shouted to her soldiers, “Activate the particles.”  
  
“Oi!” Rose protested. “I haven’t got any particles in me anymore!”  
  
“Your eyes say differently, girl. Purge every last one!”  
  
Donna and Lance began to glow and, once again, the song filled Rose’s mind. So that’s why she was up here. The Empress, or maybe Lance–one of them must have noticed something when the particles had been active earlier. They must’ve thought she had them within her as well. She hadn’t glowed, had she?   
  
Oh, but the song was so exquisitely wonderful, and yet unbearably heartbreaking.  
  
“And… Release!”  
  
Rose didn’t expect anything to happen so she was surprised when her body suddenly felt hot. It snapped her out of her daze and her eyes flew open. Something was tugging on her, trying to pull her down, and she gasped, expecting to go plummeting to her death any second. The undertone of the song in her mind changed, turning possessive and angry. **_Mine._**  
  
And then came the pain. Excruciatingly hot, like someone had shot fire into her body. It raced through her, razing every nerve and bone. The pull on her body increased and the pain grew worse. The song echoed soundly in her ears; it was loud and angry, challenging and possessive. Her mouth opened and she let out a scream of agony.  
  
Donna’s head whipped to the side. Rose’s face was contorted around a scream of pain. Her back arched against the web–having struggled against the binds herself, Donna could only imagine the amount of strength that must have taken.  
  
“Rose!” Donna shouted.  
  
Rose looked at her, face pained and terrified. And her eyes! They were glowing. The irises were gold, deep and fathomless, the pupils as dark as ink, and even the whites of her eyes seemed to shine. They snapped shut as her face screwed up, another scream tearing out of her mouth.   
  
That final scream must have lasted for a full ten seconds before it died in her throat. Rose hung limply in her binds, her hair falling forward to cover her face. For a horrifying moment, Donna was afraid that she was dead. She struggled against the webbing, shouting her name.   
  
“Is she dead?” Lance asked, horrified.  
  
Donna was about to tell him yes when she noticed some strands of Rose’s hair fluttering near her mouth and the slow movement of her chest. “No,” she choked out. “No, she’s alive.” Turning her glare on the surprised Empress, she shouted, “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?”  
  
“I did nothing,” the Empress hissed.   
  
“She told you she didn’t have anything!”  
  
“It is of no consequence. She will be dead soon anyway. My lost children are now reborn to feed on flesh! The web star shall come to me!” With a hiss, she looked back down at the tunnel in the ground.   
  
Donna stared downwards in horror. Miles and miles below, a white light glowed brightly, and the sounds of scuttling and hissing echoed off the walls. Oh, God, how many were there? Where was the Doctor? He said he’d sort it all…  
  
“My babies will be hungry. They need sustenance.” Looking up at them, she hissed loudly. “Perish the web!”  
  
“No!” Lance jerked his head at Donna. “Use her, not me! Use her! Use the other girl! Not me! You promised!”  
  
“Oh, my funny little Lance,” she rasped. Lance whimpered in protest. “But you were quite impolite to your lady friend! The Empress does not approve.”  
  
The Empress of the Racnoss reared up on her backmost legs, stretching her torso as long as it would go, and swiped a pincer at the web around Lance. It gave way under his weight and he fell screaming into the pit.   
  
“LANCE!” Donna shouted. The Empress hissed gleefully as his body disappeared into the light and his screams faded. Donna stared after him. On the one hand, she was glad he was becoming Racnoss food. The two-faced son of a bitch had lied to her, used her, and betrayed the whole planet. On the other hand… She’d loved him. She’d wanted to marry him. It wasn’t that she didn’t understood what he’d been saying before, she just hadn’t wanted to.   
  
The Empress was shouting commands to someone about harvesting the humans; Donna wasn’t really paying attention. Between her conflicting emotions about Lance’s death, worrying about Rose, and wondering what the hell was taking that bloody Martian so long, she didn’t have room for much else. What was the point, anyway? She was probably going to be spider food in a few minutes.   
  
“My children are climbing towards me and none shall stop them!” The Empress declared. “So you might as well unmask, my clever little Doctor Man.”  
  
Donna’s head whipped around, following the Empress’s gaze. She didn’t see the Doctor; she only saw a robot.  
  
The robot started to pull its cloak off, revealing a brown pinstriped suit. “Oh, well. Nice try,” the Doctor’s voice came from underneath the mask. He tossed the disguise to the ground and pulled out his sonic screwdriver. He lifted the sonic and pointed it at Rose’s bindings first. They started to snap and Rose’s body jolted, but she didn’t stir.  
  
“Doctor, stop!” Donna shouted. “She’s unconscious.”   
  
“I know,” he growled, turning the sonic towards her. She heard the webbing breaking and felt gravity start to tug her downwards. “See that thick piece in front of you? Hang onto it then reach over and grab ahold of Rose.”  
  
The Doctor noticed that the Empress hadn’t tried to interfere. Perhaps she thought it was too late to stop her and didn’t care if they were free–or perhaps she wanted to see if it would actually work. If it didn’t, he wouldn’t even offer her a chance.   
  
He watched Donna struggle to get her arm around Rose and he worried that she wouldn’t be strong enough to hold her, but this was the only way. If the Racnoss didn’t take his offer, then Rose might not survive up there long enough. He activated the sonic and the last of the webbings around them snapped. With a scream, they plummeted towards the hole and his hearts literally stopped beating. Donna somehow held onto her long enough for them to get clear of the hole and the Empress, but then she let go. It wasn’t a long fall, but he still winced when he heard Rose make contact with the ground. She didn’t move. He didn’t realize until it was too late that Donna was on a collision course and she hit the metal cabinet beneath the stairs.   
  
She groaned in pain as she crumpled to the floor and he made a face. “Ooh. Sorry.”  
  
“Yeah, you will be,” she grumbled. She slapped the front of her dress and sat up. Her arm was sore from trying to hold Rose up and she was going to have bruises later. But she didn’t complain, scrambling to her feet and over to Rose’s unconscious form.  
  
Donna knelt beside her and rolled the younger woman onto her back, brushing the hair out of her face. She didn’t appear to be bleeding, which was good, though Donna wouldn’t be surprised if she was heavily bruised later. That’s if she woke up.   
  
What the _hell_ had that been earlier?   
  
The Doctor, meanwhile, was addressing the Empress. If the day came he was brought before some higher power to defend his actions on this day and all the others, he wanted to say he’d always given everyone a chance. “Empress of the Racnoss, I give you one last chance, and believe me, that’s more than I want to. I can find you a planet. I can find you and your children a place in the universe to coexist. Take that offer and end this now.”  
  
“These men are so funny,” she hissed mockingly at him.  
  
She really didn’t seem to understand what she’d done. Part of him wanted to end her and her spawn now and he didn’t care that it would be genocide. He’d never heard Rose scream like that, so in pain, so afraid, and it was the alien’s fault. “What’s you’re answer?”   
  
“Oh, I’m afraid I have to decline,” she laughed.  
  
So be it. And he would be lying if he said he wasn’t glad she’d declined. “Then what happens next is your own doing.”  
  
“I’ll show you what happens next,” the Empress hissed aggressively and lifted herself into the air. “AT ARMS!”  
  
The robots lifted their gun.  
  
Donna gasped, looking up at the Doctor. He waited calmly, hands stuffed in his pockets.   
  
“TAKE AIM! And–”  
  
The robots powered down, slumping forward at their waists. Donna looked around quickly but still the robots didn’t move. It had to be him. There was no other explanation. “What did you do?”  
  
“Guess what I’ve got, Donna?” He looked down at her and held up the robots’ remote control. “Pockets,” he chirped, giving it a tiny wave.  
  
She frowned. “How did that fit in there?”  
  
“They’re bigger on the inside.”  
  
“Roboforms are not necessary,” the Empress snapped. “My children may feast on Martian flesh.”   
  
The Doctor’s eyes were dark and fathomless, his voice quiet and flat, “Oh, but I’m not from Mars.”  
  
“Then where?”  
  
“My home planet is far away and long since gone. But its name lives on,” he paused. “Gallifrey.”  
  
The Empress’s reaction was immediate and powerful. She reared up, snarling furiously. “THEY MURDERED THE RACNOSS!”  
  
 _Gallifrey_? Donna had never heard of it. That didn’t surprise her. She hadn’t even really expected him to be from Mars, anyway. It was just a nickname to take the piss out of him. But it must have meant something to both of them if just hearing the name had changed the giant spider’s attitude towards him so monumentally.   
  
He stared down at the spider without an ounce of pity. “I warned you. You did this.”   
  
From his pocket, the Gallifreyan pulled out three red spheres that glinted in the light. Baubles from the trees at the reception, she realized. The Empress must’ve realized what he was about to do because she begged for him to stop. Her pleas fell on death ears. He tossed them into the air and the Empress screamed. The baubles whizzed through the air, piloted by the Doctor, flying out the door, around the pipes of river water, and around the Empress herself.  
  
Several explosions shook the room and Donna flinched away from the light. Flames erupted around the Empress. The covers shot off of pipes and the doors banged open as water rushed into the room in a violent torrent. Donna hooked her arms around Rose’s shoulders to pull her out of the path of the water lest they get swept into the hole. It rained down on them, soaking her through to the bone, and her dress was heavy against her skin. That plus Rose’s weight made it nearly impossible for her to move.   
  
She looked up at the Doctor for help with Rose but he wasn’t even looking at them; he was watching the Empress writhe and scream in anguish for her doomed children. His face was void of all emotions except anger. Deep, righteous anger. There was no remorse for the murders he was committing or pity for the wailing creature before him.  
  
And for the first time, Donna Noble was well and truly afraid of him.  
  
“Doctor!” she shouted. The Doctor’s head snapped down. He stared at her, almost uncomprehendingly. “That’s enough! Get down here and help me or we’re going to die!”  
  
Rose’s imminent death was enough to snap him out of whatever haze he’d been lost in. Stuffing the controller in his pocket, he raced down the steps. Grunting, Donna continued to drag Rose towards the stairs. “Oh, come on, Blondie, _wake up_!” she shouted. Rose didn’t even so much as twitch.   
  
Then the Doctor was there and he scooped Rose up in his arms like she was weightless. “Run,” he told her.   
  
*~*  
  
The first thing Rose was aware of was the familiar, grating sound of the time rotor. Then came a soft, gentle voice.   
  
“Rose, sweetheart? Can you hear me?”   
  
“Mum?” she mumbled.   
  
A snort. “I’m not that old.”   
  
No, that was definitely not Jackie Tyler. Jackie was in a parallel universe with Pete and Mickey. Rose was in the TARDIS with the Doctor in their proper universe.   
  
Rose opened her eyes blearily and saw a white and red mass leaning over her. She blinked a few times and the face of Donna Noble came into view. Rose blinked again. Her eyes flickered around, taking in her surroundings. They were in the TARDIS, not the secret underground Torchwood base, and she was currently lying on the grating. Donna was kneeling over her with one of her hands covering Rose’s. Rose reached up and rubbed her eyes, slowly sitting up and groaning as the new injuries to her body made themselves known. Every inch of her felt bruised and she wouldn’t be surprised if she had a few broken bones.  
  
“Easy does it,” Donna cautioned and proceeded to place her arm around Rose’s shoulders for support.   
  
Rubbing her eyes, she murmured, “Where’s the Doctor?”   
  
“Over there,” she nodded to the console. “Now hang on, don’t go gettin’ up just yet. You got banged up pretty badly.”  
  
“What happened?”  
  
She felt Donna stiffen. Checking over her shoulder to make sure the Doctor was occupied, Donna leaned down to whisper to her. “How much do you remember?”  
  
“I… I was… We got caught. They stuck us up in the web with Lance… The Empress made us all say ‘I do’ an’ then…then…” Rose bit the inside of her lip, brow furrowing. And then the Empress had activated the Huon particles and tried to draw them out, but Rose’s body had rebelled. And, _oh_ , how it had hurt. But after that she couldn’t remember anything. “I passed out?”  
  
“Yeah. And, just so you know, I had a hell of a time getting you away from that hole. You might be sore for a bit.”  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
“Don’t mention it.” Donna smiled but it didn’t quite meet her eyes. “But Rose… Just before you passed out, I saw…” she swallowed. “Your _eyes_ , Rose–they were glowing, just like I was.”  
  
Rose sucked in a breath through her teeth, eyes wide. No, it couldn’t be. Because that meant when the Doctor pulled the Vortex from her mind and the Heart from her body, that something got left behind…  
  
She still had Huon particles in her body, after all this time.   
  
_I should be dead_ , she realized. She glanced over Donna’s shoulder at the Doctor but he honestly didn’t seem to be listening to them, otherwise he would’ve reacted. He was too intent on the controls; though she had no doubt he knew she was awake.   
  
Swallowing, her eyes flicked back to Donna and she realized the older woman was waiting for an explanation. But Rose didn’t have one, not one that would make sense. “Oh.”  
  
“Did someone do that to you, too?” Donna whispered.   
  
“No…” Rose looked down at her legs. “I can’t explain it. Just–just don’t say anything to him.”  
  
“But–”  
  
“Please. He’ll panic and I really, _really_ can’t handle much more today.”  
  
“But they could kill you,” she whispered.   
  
“It’s been about a year now. I don’t think a few more days will matter at this point.”   
  
Donna blinked. “You knew?”  
  
Rose opened her mouth, closed it, and nodded.   
  
“Did he?”  
  
“He knew when it happened. We thought he’d sorted it. I guess something went wrong.” Sighing, Rose picked herself up off the floor. Donna lingered below in case she fell, but once Rose was on her feet she straightened up. “I’ll be alright,” she added, loud enough for the Doctor to hear, and felt the ship touch down  
  
He looked up and smiled at her, relieved, and said, “We’re here.”   
  
“Where?” Rose asked.  
  
“Donna’s house, of course,” he replied. “I think it’s the same day, might be wrong, but I did me best. She’s still a bit tetchy from the chase earlier and all this business with the particles messing with her systems. Sorry girl,” he added, patting the rotor.  
  
The rotor bobbed up and down once and Donna nearly jumped out of her skin. “Did it just respond?”   
  
“Yep.”  
  
“How’s that work?”  
  
Rose smiled. “She’s alive.”  
  
Donna’s eyes grew impossibly wide. “No. No, I’m sorry, but that–that’s just too much.” She shook her head and made for the doors. The Doctor and Rose exchanged a glance then followed her outside.  
  
“She can handle that the TARDIS is bigger on the inside and can travel in time, but it’s the fact that she’s alive that gets her.” The Doctor shook his head. “Honestly.”  
  
“Give her a break. A lot’s happened today.”  
  
“Yeah,” he exhaled. “It has.”  
  
Donna was standing just outside the TARDIS and staring at her home. The three of them stood side-by-side and gazed in through the decorated windows where they could see her parents talking. They both looked worried and her mum was crying.   
  
“You should get in there,” Rose said.   
  
“Mmm, s’pose I should.” she looked up at the Doctor. “Am I safe now, Doctor?”  
  
He pulled out the sonic screwdriver and scanned her body. He read the results and smiled. “Yeah, should be just fine. All the Huon particles have gone.”   
  
“Yeah, but apart from that… I missed my wedding, lost my job, and became a widow on the same day. Sort of.”  
  
“I couldn’t save him.”  
  
Donna turned away, arms folded. “He deserved it.” They both raised their eyebrows. Her jaw twitched and she sighed, her shoulders drooping. “No. No, he didn’t.”  
  
“He was still a twat, though.” Rose nodded towards the house. “You really should get in there. She’s probably missing you terribly.”  
  
Donna laughed once without mirth. “You know, one of the biggest reasons she was so supportive of me marrying Lance was so that I’d finally move out. But lookin’ at her now… She’s probably not gonna let me out of her sight for a week.”  
  
“Just be lucky you have her.” Rose told her seriously. “Both of them. I’d give anything to have either of mine right now. Well, almost anything,” she corrected with a glance at the Doctor. “And look,” she added. Donna’s father had just folded his arms around his wife and was patting her back soothingly. “I reckon you’ll be the best Christmas present they get this year.”  
  
Donna laughed, for real this time.   
  
“Oh, but she hates Christmas.” the Doctor told her.  
  
“Yes, I do,” Donna agreed.   
  
“Even,” the Doctor backed towards the TARDIS and slid his hand up behind the top of the door, “if it snows?”  
  
The lamp on the top of the TARDIS flared and a ball of light shot into the sky. It exploded like a firework and rained snow down on them. Rose and Donna laughed, lifting their hands up. The tiny snowflakes immediately began to gather on their clothes and in their hair and the Doctor smiled, remembering last Christmas. Then it had been ash that had caught in Rose’s hair. She was still just as beautiful, even more so with the knowledge that the tiny flakes weren’t the remains of a spaceship and its passengers.  
  
“I didn’t know she could do that,” Rose laughed.  
  
“Oh, it’s just a basic atmospheric excitation,” he said as if it were nothing. _Anything to see your smile._  
  
“Bigger on the inside, travels through time and space, can make it snow, and it’s alive. Is there anything your ship can’t do?” Donna shook her head, but she was smiling. “Next, I suppose you’ll tell me she can talk.”  
  
“Well, she can, sort of.” the Doctor tapped his temple meaningfully.   
  
Donna lifted her eyebrows and shook her head again. “I should’ve seen that coming.” The three of them looked at each other and then laughed at the same time.   
  
“So… What will you do with yourself now?” he asked when the laughter subsided.  
  
“Not getting married, for starters.” Donna sighed. “And I’m not gonna temp anymore. I don’t know. Travel; see a bit more of planet Earth. Walk in the dust,” she grinned at them. “Just… Go out there and do something.”  
  
“Good luck,” Rose told her sincerely.  
  
The Doctor scuffed at the ground with one of his trainers. “You know, you could always come with us?”  
  
And damn if he didn’t notice the way Rose flinched at his words. He glanced at her and immediately regretted offering. Now was not the time for them to be taking on a new companion. It was too soon. They still had things to resolve in the aftermath of Canary Wharf and he had a sinking suspicion that Rose wouldn’t be up for any gallivanting for a little bit. After the Time War, it had taken a solid month and saving a family from the Titanic, along with a lot of encouraging on the TARDIS’s part before he’d gotten back on his feet. He wouldn’t push her.   
  
Luckily, Donna was already shaking her head. “No, I can’t.”  
  
He nodded, “Alright, then.”  
  
“No, but really. I mean, everything we did today–do you live your lives like that?”  
  
“…Not all the time.”  
  
Donna looked at him skeptically. “I think you do. And I couldn’t. Both of you, and that mad ship–you all scare me to death. Besides, I think we all need some time down, and I can’t just leave my family now. Tell you what, though. It’s Christmas! You should come inside for dinner. Mum always cooks enough for twenty.”  
  
The Doctor looked down at Rose. She looked up at him. He lifted his eyebrow, leaving the decision up to her. She sighed and shook her head. “No. It–it doesn’t feel like Christmas to me. I seen the trees and the decorations, but it’s just like any other time we drop in on a holiday. If I go in there for dinner, then it’s gonna feel like Christmas, and I…I’m not ready to spend Christmas without Mum jus’ yet.”  
  
“I understand,” Donna nodded. She leaned over and hugged her for a moment.   
  
“Don’t I get a hug?”  
  
“Oh, c’mere you.” Donna pulled him into a firm embrace. Drawing back, she asked, “Am I ever gonna see you again?”   
  
The Doctor smiled. “If we’re lucky.”   
  
“Right. You take care of each other, then. Good luck with your ‘just friends’ thing.”  
  
“Good luck to you, too,” the Doctor told her. “And just…be magnificent.”  
  
She chuckled. “I think I will, yeah.”   
  
With another smile at her, the Doctor stepped inside the TARDIS. Rose lingered outside for a moment longer and Donna looked at her meaningfully with more than just a bit of sympathy in her eyes. Rose swallowed, said nothing, and slipped inside the ship.  
  
She shut the door softly behind her and walked up towards the console. The Doctor was already initiating the dematerialization sequence, minus the usual spring in his step. It had been a very long day for both of them and as far as she knew, he hadn’t slept in three weeks. Even for him that was pushing it. The ship shuddered and Rose had the strange sense that they were flying upwards before the flight smoothed out and they entered the vortex.  
  
Rose sat down in the pilot’s seat, scratching her thumbnail absentmindedly. She could hear the question in the air as loudly as if they’d both screamed it. _Now what?_  
  
Where did they go from here?   
  
After the hospital on New Earth, he’d asked for permission to enter her mind. He wanted to give her mental shields to protect her from telepathic attacks so what Cassandra did could never happen again. After having her mind invaded and body taken over, Rose was in no hurry to allow anyone in her head again. If it were anyone but the Doctor who’d asked, she would’ve told them to piss off. But it was him, and she loved him, and she trusted him. And he’d _asked_ for permission ahead of time instead of just doing it and informing her later. So she’d allowed him into her mind, keeping all but a few doors shut in case he went looking, though she doubted he would.   
  
She’d felt his presence, comforting and definitely occupying space, but not invasive. It was warm and gentle, like a candle’s flame, brushing her mind gently. She’d brushed back, trying to convey her gratitude in a way she never could with words. In that moment she saw several flashes of memory, a succession of faces, each lasting less than a second, but all of them perfectly clear. Three in particular seemed to linger slightly longer than the rest: young black-haired, blue-eyed boy grinning mischievously as he held up a mouse-like creature by the tail; a petite young woman with pixie cut black hair and green eyes, smiling warmly at him; a woman with long blonde hair patting the head of an earlier version of K9.   
  
It had been so long since he’d looked into another’s mind like this, feeling another consciousness against his own, and he remembered all the people with whom he’d communicated telepathically. There was such longing and grief behind each memory that she knew, somehow, each and every face she saw belonged to a Time Lord or Lady.   
  
When he drew back and quietly announced he was done, she realized for the first time just how truly _alone_ he was. It was right then and there she vowed that, no matter what, even if he changed his face again, she would never leave him. That he would never be alone, not for as long as she lived.   
  
And yet at the same time, she’d also accepted that there might come a day when she lost him. That he would not survive and she would have to allow the TARDIS to take her home. This ship and the man currently messing with its controls were all she had. There was nothing at home for her anymore; nothing but friends and family she hadn’t spent much time with for two years, three for them.  
  
And, oh, God, she had to tell them all about Jackie…  
  
Rose combed her fingers through her hair, pushing it away from her face and sighed. They might as well get this over and done with. “We should get back to June. I need to clear the flat and–”  
  
“No,” he interrupted quietly, but firmly. The Doctor walked around the console and cupped her face in his hands. “It can wait. The TARDIS needs to finish recovering and recalibrating and you–you need sleep.”  
  
“So do you.”  
  
“It can wait,” he repeated.  
  
“I can’t sleep. Every time I’ve tried I have nightmares.” She glanced down, pressing her lips together. “Will you stay with me?”  
  
He tilted her head up, staring into her eyes, then leaned forward and gently kissed her forehead. “Of course.”  
  
Hand cradled securely in his, Rose lead him out of the console room and down the hallways to where she’d last seen her bedroom. It was still in the same place and, unsurprisingly, his room was right across from hers. He waited on her bed while she went in the bathroom. She hadn’t had a shower in nearly two days and her body was sticky from the Racnoss web. The warm water felt heavenly against her skin and she lingered in there for far longer than she needed to. She squeezed as much water out of her hair as she could with a towel, brushed it, and then wrung it once more. She slid on her softest pajama pants, a loose t-shirt, and fuzzy socks, and then left the bathroom.  
  
She found the Doctor right where she’d left him, minus his shoes, tie, and jacket. The top of his Oxford was unbuttoned, showing the light brown undershirt. He was fiddling with a megaminx with his tongue clamped between his teeth and his brow wrinkled in concentration. Rose smiled to herself, remembering his face when she’d given it to him. Rubik’s cubes were child’s play, but this thing seemed to honestly entertain him. He’d only solved it once so far.   
  
“How’s it coming?” she asked.  
  
“Nearly got it,” he replied without looking up.  
  
She smiled again and sat down on the bed next to him. She rested her head on his shoulder and watched his hands twist and turn the dodecahedron. Her eyes began to droop and she stopped trying to track his progress. Then his hands stilled and he set the megaminx on her bedside table. The Doctor got out of the way so she could crawl under the covers and when she scooted over to make room for him he stretched out next to her under the duvet.   
  
This was hardly the first time they’d shared a bed, but usually there was some amount of distance between them or he was on top of the duvet. She wasn’t having any of that tonight. Rose snuggled close to him, slipping her arm around his waist and resting her head on his arm. Neither of them said a word, but then again, neither of them needed to. With one hand’s fingers playing with her hair and his other tracing circular patterns on her back, she finally allowed the weight of exhaustion to pull her under.


End file.
